Mores and Moods

When it comes to non-fiction, I almost always have multiple books going at once.  Four or five isn’t unheard of.  Partly, that’s because of the kind of non-fiction I read … inspirational … psychology … self-help … spirituality.  These genres seem to go one way or another.  In some, the author latches onto a few useful principles for making life better then expands them into a book though repetition and anecdotes.  I hate repetition and if I wanted stories, I’d be reading fiction, so I take breaks.  On the other hand, some of these books require so much heavy lifting that I need breaks.  Yes, I also have a limited attention span.  Yes, I also leave my books wherever I happen to be reading and forget about them until I pass that way again.

Sunday morning, I drove my son to the doctor’s office and while I was waiting in the car, I found Amy Alkon’s I See Rude People waiting patiently between the driver’s seat and console, a page dog-eared over at the beginning of the last chapter.   You may recall that I posted on Rude People back on February 2nd, so this little 200 pager has been in the works for two months.  The last chapter, It’s Nice to Be Nice, was different from the rest of the book, which was a humorous and sometimes snarky exploration of rudeness in our culture and it’s causes … along with some strategies for fighting back.  The last chapter talked about the benefits of being nice, not just for society but for ourselves.  When we do things of other people, she says, we not only feel better, we subtly encourage people to do nice things for us.  She cites work by psychologist Paul Ekman that shows we are able to discern niceness from a variety of microexpressions, like eye movements and gestures.  I think she’s probably right … I just wish that rude and nasty people would get back what they dish out in kind, too.  I suppose, though, they wouldn’t care enough to notice.

At lunch, I found Richard Carlsen’s you can HAPPY no matter what hiding under some mail on the kitchen table, bookmarked at the beginning of Chapter Two, The Principle of Moods.  According to Carlsen, moods are a reflection of how seriously we take our own thinking at any given minute.  In a good mood, we’re inclined to ignore our imaginings of hard times ahead, while during a bad mood, the hard times seem to be already here.  He doesn’t suggest that our perceptions of reality are any more reliable in a good mood, just that we are able to deal with problems more easily in a good mood.  He also suggests that we be aware how our bad moods affect our thinking and take them a little less seriously.  I think this is really good advice but I see one caveat based on behavior I’ve seen in myself.  People in good moods sometimes minimize or ignore problems, so we shouldn’t get carried away by our good moods either.   To me, balance always seems best.

So, it’s Top Sites Tuesday.  I’ve knocked off one book and gotten one more chapter into another.  I’m sure there are several more around here somewhere.  My Two Thoughts on Tuesday are:  Be nice to people, it’s good for you … and don’t take your moods too seriously, up or down.  You can do both by pushing my button to make me Number One on Top Sites Tuesday # 145 … regardless of your mood.

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