What is moodiness?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: “Is being moody good or not?”

Acharya Prashant (AP): But, first of all, must we not ask what are these moods? Do you know what these moods really are? You take water in a saucer, in a saucer, a plate, and the water is lying still but if you keep the saucer under this fan, what will happen to the surface of the water? What will happen?

Listener (L): Vibrations.

AP: Yes, there will be ripples that you are calling as vibrations. Some kind of wave formation. Right?

This is what we call as moods — External event disturbing my inner peace.

An outside event is dominating my mind. It is creating ripples.

Now, is the water not becoming a slave of the external situation? Tell me.

Is it not better for the water to say, “My mood will be under my control. My control. I will not allow other situations to affect me.” But that is not our story.

Our story is that somebody says, “Hey! looking gorgeous today.” And we work up such a nice mood. And somebody says, “Hey! where did you get this haircut from? Take two rupees from me, get a better haircut.” And we feel as if we have been put in some sever.

Our mood is always dependent on others and situations, always. And is such a deep slavery.

Anybody can come and spoil my mood and even to correct my mood,

I need some external help — I need to watch a movie, I need to some kind of music, I need to talk to my best friend, I at least need to sleep to correct my mood — and this is such a deep slavery.

Anybody can spoil your mood. What kind of an individual are you?

So easily you get hurt. Have you no inner locus of control?

Talking on the phone, somebody says something and she starts crying on the phone itself. Probably she thinks just as you have voice transfer and image transfer, you also have tear transfer. What kind of an individual are you? Somebody says something to you on the phone and you start crying.

You are so down. Results have not been up to your expectations and we have so many…