GOOD MOOD MAKES A DIFFERENCE?

A good mood sets the day.

A bad mood?

Everyone has one, but not everyone shares it over and over. And over.

Is there a huge difference between the two?

Let’s say you face a situation where a bad mood spins things further away from a solution, an agreement.

Whaddya gonna do?

I listened to someone explain their bad mood longer than I should have.

Their bad mood hit hard.

I let it go, more or less, because of the situation.

If I hadn’t, then I would have been moody.

When you are in a group setting and everything is going so well, why ruin it for everyone else with a bad mood.

Instead of anger, hostility, and pointing a finger into someone’s chest to punctuate where they’re wrong, and where they should get off, let it go.

Sit and listen, then keep listening.

They were letting something out that needed out more than I needed to correct them for their misguided point of view.

What I like to tell people is don’t let someone else’s mood change yours.

I was in a good mood doing my duty, and happy about it.

But that’s just me.

Someone else would have done it differently.

There would have been an ugly exchange that ruined a relationship.

Was the relationship already ruined? If it was I wasn’t about to add more reasons.

Instead I kept my good mood, held onto it like Jack held onto a floating piece of the sinking Titanic with Rose.

Two days later I checked into the local ICU for the night.

If a relationship goes into the toilet, make sure you don’t jump in after it.

This isn’t the deep end of the pool without a lifeguard, it just feels that way.

 

A Selfish Mood Is Different?

People want to be heard, they need to be heard.

Problems arise when they start on something they don’t know about, but insist on ‘being heard.’

While that’s going on, look the audience.

Some tune out and turn away, some go all in with the biggest embrace of their life.

Who does that? Who embraces the new reality that isn’t a reality you’re familiar with?

It’s the people who have room in their brain because their mind is unclogged with critical thinking, comparisons, and scientific facts.

Their lives are sheltered from history, economics, and social justice.

When someone they believe in wholeheartedly says something they know is a load of crap, but their belief in the person is greater, they get a bigger spoon and start shoveling it down.

What’s the reasoning when they say, “It’s not crap. I’ve done my own research. Besides, it tastes so good. Try some.”

They want you to join them in spooning it up by the mouthful.

Is that you when your Mom and Dad engage in repulsive behavior, offensive acts, and want to share their new-found awareness?

The ‘woke’ crowd gets degraded for learning things done on their behalf that are repulsive and offensive.

After talking it out, admitting past ignorance, and pledging to do better, they get tagged as ‘snowflakes.’

Those calling them out and, ‘telling it like it is’, are called something else.

Some jack-wad sitting at a table with a microphone and a headset spewing their special blend of bullshit may believe what’s coming out of their mouth. Or not.

Problems occur when someone without the background to know better takes it all in at face value, call it ‘marching orders’, and acts out in total confidence.

Think of a book you’ve read, a movie you’ve seen more than once, and someone starts telling you the plot, but it’s the wrong book or movie.

After they finish and you correct them in a nice way, a polite way, they go ballistic because that’s their response, their standard response to learning new things, what’s next?

Maybe you know the answer to what’s next.

In their eyes you are a moron. Or, as the Three Stooges say, a moran.

And they want you to hear them loud and clear.

Real loud, if not real clear.

 

A Good Mood Is A Moving Mood

This is a picture of Larry Bird of Boston Celtics fame.

You can date the picture by the number of players sporting Converse shoes instead of Nikes.

Since 2003 Nike has owned Converse, literally owned the brand.

Back in the day Larry Bird owned the NBA with his golden halo of Indiana goodness.

He said things like, “I want to be the fattest man to leave Boston.”

Then he hurt his back laying cement for his mother’s driveway.

After that injury he struggled with his basketball health.

While not a man promoting a good mood on any particular day, he once put sports fans in a good mood, fans who followed the ‘fat man’ code of overeating and under exercising.

Between Bird and Magic Johnson, they were credited with saving the NBA from falling into insignificance.

They paved the way for Detroit Piston back-to-back dominance, then Michael Jordan’s Bulls’ two three-peats.

Bird wasn’t the only trash-talker in the league, but maybe the best based on is opponents’ memories.

 

What Makes A Good Mood Better? The Arts

Learn to play a musical instrument.

Learn to play a guitar.

Three chord rock and roll, two finger blues, and you.

Work on a three song set that explains things better than any class, things like heart break.

Heart break, as long as it’s not yours doing the breaking, is always a good mood.

My current three:

The Eagles’ Take It Easy is a chronicle of some bone-king with seven women on his mind, four that want to own him, two that want to stone him, one who says she’s a friend.

It’s followed by Kris Kristofferson’s Me And Bobby McGee, a song about the same bone-king dreaming about the girl who got away.

He lost her somewhere near Salinas. Feeling good wasn’t so easy after that.

The final is Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues.

Here’s the story:

My guy runs through women with the usual promises and they fall for it.

He finally finds his true love, but he can’t commit and drifts away.

Later on someone said something wrong and he shoots them dead.

The only thing he hears after his arrest and conviction of murder is a lonesome train whistle blowing all the way to San Antonio while he hangs his head and cries.

But he knew he had it coming and he’ll never be free.

The moral of the story?

You give it a shot.

Do that and you’re practicing an art.

And we all need practice.