The origin of bad moods- and what to do about them

In general, happy moods have easy explanations – we know why we’re elated. But a bad mood often seems to arrive out of the blue, a gloomy weather pattern that settles in from everywhere all at once. All of a sudden, we find ourselves pissed off without a good reason, which only makes us more pissed off.

But what causes these bad moods? Why do we sometimes slip into angry fits and melancholy torpors? Have you ever wondered why you can make good choices for your health throughout most of the day only to crash and burn later by skipping the gym and having a second dessert? Or why you might be able to control your emotions and how you communicate them earlier in the day, but later feel more out of control or unable to express things as smoothly?

According to Jonah Lehrer, in an interesting article on “ where bad moods come from”, the standard theory of bad moods is rooted in a psychological quirk known as ego depletion or ED. I hesitate to use ED as an acronym mainly because to viewers of late night TV in the U.S, ED stands for erectile dysfunction- which of course leads to many a bad mood in its own right. No, we are talking about a different concept altogether.

The basic idea behind ego depletion seems to be that self-control and willpower are limited cognitive resources. As a result, when we overexert ourselves in one domain – say, when we’re on a strict diet, or focused on a difficult task for hours at work – we have fewer resources left over to exert self-control in other domains. This helps explain why, after a long day at the office, we’re more likely to indulge in a pint of ice cream, or eat one too many slices of pizza. A tired brain, preoccupied with its problems, is going to struggle to resist what it wants, even when what it wants isn’t what we need.

It seems that ego depletion wears out over time. According to the theory is that since we have a finite pool of resources (energy) that allows us to regulate our emotions, thoughts, choices, and behavior, and that like a muscle being used, it wears out with use. So if your bicep was your ability to self-regulate (make good decisions, keep your cool, etc), and you did a set of curls, the 12th curl would be more difficult than the first. Just like the first time passing up a cupcake is more difficult than the 12th in one day (if it would even take that long before you would just eat one). To make the picture even more bleak, there are a few things that start us off with even less of these resources to begin with, including lack of sleep in the preceding night, experiencing fatigue, being hungry, having some kind of negative emotions (anger, sadness, jealousy, etc), or just not being very motivated. So it is easier to drift into a bad mood.

When we push our mind too hard, asking it to refrain from carbs and cigarettes, we struggle to avoid the negative thoughts and emotions that lead to sour moods. Consider this 2007 study: The scientists told subjects to refrain from eating a tempting chocolate donut for a few minutes. Then, they insulted these poor (and probably hungry) experimental volunteers. Not surprisingly, those who had successfully resisted the donut were more likely to get aggressive in response to the insult. Or look at the medical literature, in which people on diets are typically “irritable and aggressive.” (This is the so-called cranky dieter effect.) Although we’d like to be happy and polite, those positive moods take cognitive work, and our brain is too tired to care. We lose our temper because we lack the willpower to swallow our angry words.

This theory offers a great explanation for why some things may be difficult to do later in the day than earlier. For example, most couples end up having their biggest fights at the end of the day. One explanation is that it is the only time they see each other, but it is often much more than that. Having a conflict later in the day means that each partner is likely in a state of ego depletion (they have made countless decisions over the day, may be fatigued, and are then experiencing negative emotions), making the chance of anything going well very small.

Second, it explains why sustaining efforts to make changes in our lives is difficult. When the task we are doing requires more effort, our resources are used up quicker. For example, if you are trying to make a very difficult and large change, it is like picking up a heavier weight to do your bicep curls. At your best you could do a few before you wore out.

Scientists believe they may have cracked the secret of why some people are always in a bad mood. They have found that people who are regularly grumpy have an overactive area in their brains. Scans of healthy people's brains show that those who report having been in a bad mood recently have increased activity in a region of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which lies an inch or two behind the right eye in right-handed people and has been linked with emotions in other studies. Psychologist David Zald, of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, who led the study, said: "Such a connection does make sense because animal studies show that this region of the brain controls heart rate, breathing, stomach acidity levels, sweating and similar autonomous functions that have a close connection to mood."

There are, however, a few things we can do to help minimize the experience of ego depletion.

1. Get enough sleep. If you are starting off with less ability to self-regulate because you aren't sleeping enough, then this can be the best place to start.

2. Understand how it works in your life: Take a look at how ego depletion may occur with you and get a feel for how you can notice when you are experiencing it.

3. Prepare: If you are able to know that there are certain times of the day that you will need to be on your game, or that you will be entering a period of time of increased stress, then make a mental note of that ahead of time. This helps us "conserve" some of our resources.

4. HALT: This concept is nothing new to people involved in 12-step programs. For years, the acronym HALT (hungry, angry, lonely, tired) has been used to indicate being at risk for relapse. Stopping what you are doing when you recognize that you are about to make a poor decision takes some energy, but scraping some resources together at those moments can really help you avoid some big consequences.

5. Be Compassionate to Yourself: We sometimes have a tendency to compound our emotional strain when we become disappointed and angry with ourselves for falling into the ego depletion trap. If this is effective in getting you back on track then great, but for most of us it just makes us feel worse and makes it even harder.

Finally, confronting a bad mood, try letting yourself off the hook if this happens, you are human after all, and this is just a fact of normal human life.

Conquering insomnia

Lo and behold now there is a cure for insomnia ! And it does not involve any drugs or surgery. It only only involves common sense. After a good deal of research proving what does not work to cure sleep insomnia, researchers claim to have found the Shalimar of cures. The idea is to stick to a schedule that maximizes your “sleep efficiency” — the amount of time in bed you spend sleeping, instead of tossing and hoping that sleep will descend. That involves four rules: Reduce the time spent in bed. Get up at the same time every day. Don’t go to bed until you feel sleepy. Don’t stay in bed if you’re not sleeping

Author Paula Spahn argues that though this sounds way too good to be true: a quick, effective solution to the insomnia that plagues an estimated 15 to 30 percent of older adults — without drugs, without even needing to consult a physician, it has been tested and proved in field trials.

A University of Pittsburgh team, testing its method on 79 seniors with chronic insomnia (average age: 72), has reported very encouraging results. The treatment required just two explanatory sessions (the first lasts 45 to 60 minutes, the second about half an hour) with a nurse-practitioner, plus two brief follow-up phone calls, over the course of a month. Afterward, the researchers recently reported in The Archives of Internal Medicine, two-thirds of those treated reported a clearly measurable improvement in sleep, compared with 25 percent of those in a control group.

“Their total sleep time improved,” the lead author, Dr. Daniel Buysse, a psychiatry professor and sleep specialist, said in an interview. Indeed, 55 percent of those treated no longer had insomnia at all. And six months later, three-quarters of those tested had maintained or improved their better sleep patterns.

So what was this potential wonder nondrug? That’s the interesting part. The treatment was a “brief behavioral treatment intervention” known to be an effective antidote to insomnia, as documented by extensive research for over 30 years. It’s a change in what you do, not in what you ingest. Emphasis on brief.“If behavioral treatments are ever to become widespread, they have to be simple and quick and produce noticeable results,” Dr. Buysse explained. “If you don’t see substantial improvement in a month or so, patients’ motivation to persevere will diminish” — which often happens with behavioral treatments offered by clinical psychologists, which generally involve six to eight sessions. So the researchers distilled those principles into four simple rules, came up with a workbook and sleep diaries to help patients follow them, and trained a nurse-practitioner to explain the regimen and the physiology behind it.

Insomnia, like other sleep disorders, can take a serious toll on seniors’ health. It’s associated with depression, with falls and fractures, with higher mortality — and its prevalence increases with age. So doctors take insomnia seriously and prescribe medications to help patients sleep. But sedatives can create problems of their own. In older patients, sleep drugs can cause daytime drowsiness and impair memory, and they’re also associated with falls. A review of 24 studies of these “sedative hypnotics” in older people with insomnia, published in the British Medical Journal in 2005, concluded that while the drugs improved sleep, their effects were small and the hazards significant. “In people over 60, the benefits of these drugs may not justify the increased risk,” the researchers wrote.

An intervention not involving drugs would therefore be a great boon to seniors and their caregivers. “In an ideal health care system, one would expect behavioral treatment for insomnia to be widely disseminated because of the data showing efficacy,” not to mention the cost savings from reduced drug use and fewer side effects and injuries, Thomas C. Neylan, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary accompanying the study.

So why isn’t this method commonly prescribed? Dr. Buysse’s hypothesis: “I believe the biggest barriers are that people think the interventions are complicated and costly. So we really tried to distill the proven techniques into the simplest possible form.” The method will need testing on a larger scale, and nurses or other professionals will need training before they can help patients use it — but not a lot of training. Dr. Buysse estimates that groups of instructors can be prepared with an eight-hour course.

The idea is to stick to a schedule that maximizes your “sleep efficiency” — the amount of time in bed you spend sleeping, instead of tossing and hoping that sleep will descend. That involves four rules: Reduce the time spent in bed. Get up at the same time every day. Don’t go to bed until you feel sleepy. Don’t stay in bed if you’re not sleeping.

The nurse instructing patients in the technique uses diagrams and examples, describes the physiology involved, cautions that people may feel tired and sleep-deprived for the first few weeks but usually go on to deeper, more restful sleep that comes more quickly. Still, that’s about all that needs to be said — not much. In the study, three brochures given to the control group contained a lot of the same information, but just reading about better sleep habits didn’t do the trick.

However obvious the strategy may sound, “the reality is, people gravitate toward the exact opposite behavior,” Dr. Buysse said. “It’s common to see older adults spend 10 or 12 hours in bed in order to get five hours of sleep. It’s very frustrating.”

But it’s also frustrating to think that a potentially safe and effective answer to a widespread problem might once more fail to make its way out of an academic journal and into physicians’ offices and people’s bedrooms. Maybe it needs a jazzier name than “brief behavioral treatment intervention” — something incorporating “Medicare” and “cost-cutting.”

The Rajat Gupta episode

Today I came across the actual recording of the phone call that Rajat Gupta made to Rajaratnam and which forms the basis of the SEC case against Rajat. I am posting it without comment and let the readers make their own judgements on what it tells about why and how Rajat was charged.

Just a small town girl...

She was a just small town girl. He was born and bred in a metropolitan city. She went to a vernacular school and knew no English. He was trained by the Jesuists and was fluent in Sanskrit and English. She was unaware of life beyond her little community. He lived in a metropolitan city with the latest in modern technology. She had never visited a major city or been on an aeroplane. He had never lived in a village and knew little of the hardships of rural life in the country. But she was wise in the ways of the world having observed her parents cope with the difficult life they led as they struggled to raise their five children. He was the top scholar of his class who hoped to study abroad to complete his education but knew little of economic struggle. But time was apassing and it was decided that he would marry. So here he was a citified and western educated man about to marry a small town girl with values as distant from his own as could be. They seemed to belong to two completely different cultures and value systems. How would they cope with these differences?

In a sense they captured perfectly the conflicts of values that were rising in India in the 1990's with rapid economic development. As Anand Giridardas observes in his excellent book, " India Calling", there are today two distinct visions of morality that are at war in India. The first vision sees compliance with the law, adherence to universal values and integrity, avoidance of corruption and a clean public service as ideals to be fought for. The second vision invites all to compete in the marketplace, using all the wiles and tricks that the law allows to amass wealth, which does not frown on corruption but rather uses it to enhance their path to success, that focuses on family’s progess rather than on social good as the prime objective of life.

“These two visions mingle and compete and combine in Indian life, but the first emphasis has echoes of Western Judeo-Christian tradition of thought, and the second emphasis is more rooted in in the Hindu world view.” AK Ramanujam argued in his brilliant essay “Is there an Indian way of thinking” that these different emphases define the fault line between the Indian and Western minds. “ He writes of the ancient Indian sage and law giver Manu, whose teachings form the basis of much of the context sensitive morality in the emerging India. Manu has no clear notion of a universal human nature from which one can deduce ethical decrees like “Man shall not kill” or “Man shall not tell an untruth. There seems to be no notion of a state, no unitary law of all men.” Ramanujan contrasts this with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: “ Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a Universal Law of Nature”. What he concludes is that traditional Indian thinking, moral and otherwise, is “context sensitive” as opposed to the “context free” orientation of mainstream Western thought which aspires to universal principles and norms.”

As Anand argues “Universaliation means putting oneself in another’s place- it is the golden rule of the New Testament- do not do unto others what you do not want done unto you." The main tradition of Judeo Christian ethics is based on a premise of universalisation while for Manu to be moral is to particularize- to ask who did what, to whom and when. In India, the context for moral reasoning has traditionally been ones caste or class or family circle, not the society at large and not the civic commons. It is an alternative morality of the family, a context sensitive morality in which moral reasoning is based on the effect of ones choices on those one cared about and not about any universal values or norms. The first was a society of propriety and principles and universal ideals. The second of context sensitive choices of right and wrong.

And according to Anand, the second vision was winning in modern day India- it was after all the vision of Dhirubhai Ambani – and not the first vision of universality of laws and values espoused by Nehru. In this emerging vision, it was fine to aspire to riches, to bargain and bribe to get to the top, to reward family loyalty, to undermine the judiciary and bribe the political establishment. These were becoming the ethos of the new “robber barons” of India.

The problem that Anand avoids discussing is what happens if this vision expands to cover the entire society where each individual is left free to bribe and pillage his way to success unheeding of the public good or adherence to public norms of any kind, where might is right and achieving monetary success is all and be all of existence. Will it not lead to a period akin to that of the robber barons in the U.S where a handful of mid- to late nineteenth century railroad owners and executives , who became known as the "robber barons" because of their illegal and monopolistic practices they used to control the U.S. railroads. Without laws and regulations, these robber barons largely did what they wanted, amassing wealth and power through their various monopolies in different sectors. Jay Gould, perhaps the most notorious of the robber barons, took over the Erie Railroad by bribing politicians, issuing fraudulent stock, launching price wars, influencing the gold market, and deceiving business associates. But there was a day of reckoning coming for these robber barons.

Around the turn of the century, the robber barons' dominance began to wane because of growing public anger over ticket price fluctuations and stock market dips stemming from the railroads. These fears were stoked by the muckrakers who publized their misdeeds. During this period, the federal government also dealt a series of blows to the robber barons in the form of laws, regulations, and court orders, which led to policies that curbed the formation of monopolies. These laws and regulations were not however sufficient or timely and this culture of excess and fraud was a major contributing factor to the famous "crash of 1929".

The simple lesson is that while unbridled greed will inevitably lead to a crash; it is equally true that a network of government regulations only leads to stagnation. Finding that balance between the two visions is essential to economic and equitable growth.

I turned once again to the two persons I mentioned above. How had they coped and dealt with the two visions and morality ? They had now been married for almost fifty years, They had two sons- one followed the traditional path of an arranged marriage and a service oriented career, albeit in a corporation not the government world and that too outside India, while the other son was more adventurous, marrying for love outside his caste and starting various ventures struggling to become an independent entrepreneur. While he was content to live within his modest means, she had become now a minor real estate entrepreneur and through careful investments in real estate had managed to increase the family wealth manifold. Just a small town girl...

In the land of scams

I returned from India last week. And the first thing I did was to take a bath. Rarely have I felt so totally unclean for India seems to have become a land of scams. A new more dishonest method of looting public monies or hoodwinking the public seems to be found almost every day. And the tragedy is that the rate and depth and extent of these robberies only seem to be increasing by the day.

Here is a short list of the scams over the past 20 years. And remember that the major scam till then was the Bofors arms purchase where the loss was only estimated at Rs 64 crores.

1992 -Harshad Mehta securities scam Rs 5,000 cr




1995 -Preferential allotment scam Rs 5,000 cr; 
Yugoslav Dinar scam Rs 400 cr; 
Meghalaya Forest scam Rs 300 cr



1996: -Fertiliser import scam Rs 1,300 cr
; Urea scam Rs 133 cr; 
Bihar fodder scam Rs 950 cr



1997 -Sukh Ram telecom scam Rs 1,500 cr
; SNC Lavalin power project scam Rs 374 cr
; Bihar land scandal Rs 400 cr
; C.R. Bhansali stock scam Rs 1,200 cr



1998 -Teak plantation swindle Rs 8,000 cr



2001 -UTI scam Rs 4,800 cr; 
Dinesh Dalmia stock scam Rs 595 cr
; Ketan Parekh securities scam Rs 1,250 cr



2005 -IPO-Demat scam Rs 146 cr; 
Bihar flood relief scam Rs 17 cr
; Scorpene submarine scam Rs 18,978 cr



2006 -Punjab's City Centre project scam Rs 1,500 cr; 
Taj Corridor scam Rs 175 cr



2008 -Pune billionaire Hassan Ali Khan tax default Rs 50,000 cr
; The Satyam scam Rs 10,000 cr
; Army ration pilferage scam Rs 5,000 cr
; The 2-G spectrum swindle Rs 60,000 cr; 
State Bank of Saurashtra scam Rs 95 cr; 
Illegal monies in Swiss banks, as estimated in 2008 Rs 71,00,000 cr



2009: -The Jharkhand medical equipment scam Rs 130 cr
; Rice export scam Rs 2,500 cr; 
Orissa mine scam Rs 7,000 cr; 
Madhu Koda mining scam Rs 4,000 cr.

The scams have not only increased in amounts – the 2 G spectrum scam has been estimated to be as much as Rs 120,000 crores. They have increased in the geographical coverage. In the early days, the scams were mainly focused in Delhi and Bombay. But now there is almost no part of the country unaffected by scoundrels. The other distressing part of these developments is that almost no part of the Indian society is left untouched. Consider this

The last Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, KBG Balakrishnan is under investigation.

The last Chief of Army staff is accused of land grab and some senior officers are being court-martialled.

The most upright of Indian businessmen- Ratan Tata- is accused of manipulating spectrum allocation through the notorious Radia tapes.

The world famous India entrepreneur and the doyen of Indian expatriates – Rajat Gupta- is accused of insider trading by the U.S SEC.

A minister – A Raja- in the cabinet of the most honest of prime ministers, is said to have plundered almost Rs 120,000 crores of the nations monies right under his nose.

An IAS couple is found to have assets worth Rs 40 crores.

And the crowning blow- the Chief Vigilance Officer for the country, Thomas- is accused of corruption which renders him unfit and is so removed from his post from the President of the country.

If all this reminds you of the days of the “robber barons” in the U.S in the early twentieth century, you would not be far wrong. Our modern day robber barons are just as venal and amoral and unmindful of the public interest. Here is a partial list of these U.S robber barons:

▪ John Jacob Astor (real estate, fur)—New York City

▪ Andrew Carnegie (steel)—Pittsburgh and New York

▪ Jay Cooke (finance)—Philadelphia

▪ Charles Crocker (railroads)—California

▪ James Buchanan Duke (tobacco)— Durham, North Carolina

▪ Jay Gould (railroads)--New York

▪ Edward Henry Harriman (railroads)—New York

▪ J. P. Morgan (banking, finance, industrial consolidation)—New York City

▪ John D. Rockefeller (oil), Standard Oil--New York

▪ Charles M. Schwab (steel) Carnegie Steel, United States Steel Corporation, Bethlehem Steel - Pittsburgh and New York

▪ Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads)--New York

A major role in limiting the power of these robber barons was played by the muckrakers. A muckraker seeks to expose corruption of businesses or government to the public. The term originates from writers of the Progressive movement in America who wanted to expose corruption and scandals in government and business. Muckrakers often wrote about the wretchedness of urban life and poverty, and against the established institutions of society, such as big business. And yes, they too were often accused of being socialists or communists or in the pay of foreign governments.

Nevertheless muckrakers were a significant part of reform in the United States in the 20th and 21st Centuries because of the freedom of the press provided for by the First Amendment of the Constitution. They played a significant role in the social justice movements for reform, and the campaigns to clean up cities and states, by constantly reporting and publicizing the dark corners of American society in a sensationalist way. During this time period, these journalists, through their research and constant exposure of the wrongdoing by officials in American public life, gave fuel to protests that led to investigations and later on reform of not only Corporate America but the American Government. The Muckrakers’ journalistic efforts helped reform and regulate Wall Street and aspects of big businesses.

Our society too seems headed to what Rudyard Kipling spoke of in “ The Jungle Book”, a society which is governed by the law of the jungle with its operating ethos being "every man for himself," "anything goes," "might makes right," "survival of the strongest", "survival of the fittest", "kill or be killed", "dog eat dog" and "eat or be eaten" almost a replication of the days of the robber barons in the US. The real question is will the muckrakers in India rise to the occasion and expose these corruptions and fuel protests leading to real reform?

When daughters break your heart...

It is said that a son gives man immortality but a daugher makes a man complete.

The relationship of a father to his daugher is one of those unique loves that transcend life. Or as Addison points out so eloquently "Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express."

It has always surprised me that despite this, most men hanker for sons rather than daughters. The proliferation of clinics that determine the sex of the new born is a frustrating illustration of this strange phenomenon. In most countries, the ratio of males to females is heavily tilted in favour of the male sex. If more men were only to know the joy that a daughter will bring to their lives, perhaps there will be less need of these clinics.

For truly " a daughter is the happy memories of the past, the joyful moments of the present, and the hope and promise of the future."

As you grow older, the truism of this saying becomes even more acute. Yet is not all roses either. However old you may be, there will be some events you will always remember, and more than most, it will be the times your daughter broke your heart!

As when you were away for a few days on work and returned home and your three year old came running to the door and hugged you with all her might and cried triumphantly " Daddy is back"...

Or when she is pining in her room, with dark music playing, waiting for a boy to call to take her out to the prom and the call never comes...

Or when she goes for her first job and returns home downcast as she had not performed as well as she expected and the job of her dreams was floating away..

Or when she announces that she hates her job and life...

Or when she wants to quit her job but does not know what she wants to do with her life ..

Or when she is not succeeding in her search for a partner...

Or when she breaks up with her partner and thinks the world has come to an end..

Or when she rails at the unfairness of life at the poverty she sees around her and feels she can do nothing about it...

Or when she is at a crossroads in her life and is confused and angry and helpless. Yet you know that she must make her own life and her own decisions and so needs standy by helplessly as she finds her way. For a father there is no greater pain than to watch any pain inflicted on his daughter and being unable to help...

The truth is a " daughter may outgrow your lap but she will never outgrow your heart". And she will break your heart all your life but no father I know would have it any other way, ever.

Dharma and love

He looked back on his life sometimes with regret. Here he was entering his seventh decade with no one really to call his own.He had had a rich life, graduated from the best schools, worked in the best companies and once looked forward to a glittering career. But then fate intervened.His only brother died leaving his parents. He really had no choice but to return and look after them leaving his love and life behind.He thought he would return soon but things dragged on and while his parents urged him to return to his interrupted career, he was stuck with his own sense of duty, and stayed.

In the Hindu way of life, adherence to ones dharma was all important.and filial duty was one of those laws written in stone. In the west while one had obligations to ones parents, one also had obligations to self, and others close to you. The Bible for example is clear, one must "leave and cleave" - leave ones parents on marriage and cleave to ones new family. But when these obligations clashed, ones dharma usually prevailed. But should it? While children had an obligation to look after their aging parents,did not these same parents have an equal obligation to ensure the best for their children? And what if the choice is between looking after old parents and being true to oneself and ones aspirations? What do the scriptures say about these choices? This was a dilemma that faces many. And it seems to have no easy answers.

And what happens when the duty is done,and dharma satisfied? How do you rewind and relive your life that has passed you by ? But there is conflict in the parent as well. While they would dearly love to have their children next to them in their declining years, they also equally desperately them want the to succeed in their lives. It is this desire that they not become millstones that often moves them to hide their ailments and pooh pooh all pain in front of their kids. It often seems that both child and parent are wrestling unbeknownst with the same dilemna. How to reconcile two unreconcilables? Dharma and profound love.

Twenty years passed as he wrestled with his demons and the still nagging conscience till one day his father died in his arms. Even in his darkest moments he recalled the look of pride and satisfaction in his fathers eyes.There was bliss there and peace that now his son would carry on. But it had been difficult as slowly and inexorably his other loved ones passed on too. The sheet anchor was left alone. He sometimes looked with regret at his friends who had families and children of their own which he could have had. But then he busied himself in volunteer works becoming an benevolent uncle to the children of the community. Still doubts nagged him. His life seemed to have passed him by.The future seemed now barren and lifeless.Emotionally he was drained and yet he reflected he was never fully engaged in his life as caregiving was a demanding mistress.He recalled an article on the loneliness of old age. But why should it be so, he argued with himself. Why should old age be friendless?

You are old, his reflection in the mirror wailed, who will want to be with you,listen to your tired jokes ,listen to your wisdom of seventy years. Who indeed, he told himself bitterly, but then he straightened his shoulders, clutched the bouquet of flowers and pressed the doorbell...

She tenderly caressed her mothers face. She had nursed her after her fathers death two decades ago.Her own marriage had broken under the strain of separation from her husbands career and her devotion to her mother. And now when the end seemed near for her mother, she wondered, what would she do now? She had left her life for her mothers.But who was there to do the same for her, her soul cried. But when her friends urged her to meet new people and restart her life again, she was full of doubts.

After all she had a comfortable life. Her bad marriage was finally behind her. Did she even want a emotional bond howsoever tenous at this stage of her life. She could go to the art shows and exhibitions she had missed for so long. She could catch up with all the gossip in the city and gallivanting with her girlfriends. But then she reflected she did miss a companion at her side who she could confide in, who would provide some emotional sustainence to her dried up life. Life seemed so simple when one was young. If one did not work out, there was surely another waiting in the wings. But now choices were limited and so seemed much more difficult to make. Her duty was done and now she had a right to her own happiness. The question that nagged her was what path to take now.

She stood uncertainly before the mirror, gazing at her sixty year old face, which still retained it's beauty though now faded, insecurity and uncertainty clouding her face..

And then the doorbell rang...

Blind faith

He sat in his wheelchair, his hands gripping the sides, his face expressionless, even while his eyes darted keenly across the room. We were meeting for our golden jubilee celebrations of graduating from one of the premier institutes in the country. It was cause for rejoicing. Yet he sat there quietly observing the scene but not making a sound as his nurse tended to him. Despite his afflictions, he had come to the celebrations and as old friends of yore entered the room, his eyes would probe his memory for some recognition and if it came, his right hand would turn with a thumbs up. But he could not indeed would not speak. No one knew why and he would not let anyone find out. Or find a cure.

All through the evening his friends came by his chair and spoke to him about their memories of him and how fondly they thought of him. They pressed his hands as he looked expressionlessly at them each one hoping for a glimmer of recognition or for a word. Some returned to their chairs in tears others in puzzlement.

He had been a colleauge of ours fifty years ago- an active participant in the school activities, a exciting forward in the colleges hockey team. He had had an active professional life gradually ascending the ladder in his chosen profession, had married and had two kids. It was a normal success story in seventies in India. Then something happened and he sought comfort in his despair in one of those esoteric religions as many of us tend to do. In his case it was christian science a religion founded by Mary Baker Eddy in the seventeenth century.

Christian Science teaches that the "allness" of God denies the reality of sin, sickness, death, and the material world asserts that man and the universe as a whole are spiritual. Christian Scientists believe that through prayer, knowing and understanding, all things are possible for good through God . They believe that Jesus Christ's way of healing is available to all people, now as much as in Biblical times. While there is no compulsion on Christian Scientists either to use Christian Science healing or to eschew medical means, Christian Scientists avoid using the two systems simultaneously in the belief that they tend to counteract or contradict each other, as material medicine and Christian Science treatment proceed from diametrically opposite assumptions. According to Christian Scientists, medicine asserts that something is physically broken and needs to be fixed, while Christian Science asserts that the spiritual reality is harmonious and perfect and that any belief to the contrary needs to be corrected.

He had become deeply immersed in its teachings and indeed became an elder of the church. But then a few years ago tragedy struck and he gradually started loosing control of his faculties. Since he would not go to a doctor let alone a specialist under the decrees of his church, the conditions worsened. He withdrew into himself and someone who had been a cheerful part of our group refused to see or meet us despite our appeals.

This was the first time we had seen him in a long time and as the evening progressed, he was the cynosure of all eyes because none of us could understand or fathom what we were seeing. And then suddenly he started dancing in his chair with both his hands uplifted in tune with the beat of long forgotten songs of our youth that were playing in the background. One of us held his hands to help in his dancing and to perhaps encourage him to get up or to even speak. But that was not to be and he soon sank back into his wheelchair exhausted by this little effort while his nurse wiped the sweat off his brows.

When time came to leave, each of us went by his wheelchair. knelt by his side and said our farewells. When time came for me to hold his hand I was overcome with emotion and tears came to my eyes as we had been good friends all our life and played together many a time on the hockey field. But these were not only tears of ineffable sorrow but of deep anger and frustration. Which religion,I raged inside, compelled a man in his prime to abjure medicine that could cure him in the name of religion? What humanity was there in any faith to reduce a perfectly normal human being, a loving husband and father, a good friend to turn into a vegetative state?

Even as I left him my fervent wish was that this gathering of friends would spark in him a desire to return back to a normal life, that his logical engineering mind would overcome the miasma of blind faith, and that he would one day soon signal to his caregivers " take me to a doctor, I want to live."

Obama's National Prayer Breakfast speech

Another one of Obama's speeches worth reading and pondering over....

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. To the co-chairs, Jeff and Ann; to all the members of Congress who are here, the distinguished guests who’ve traveled so far to be here this morning; to Randall for your wonderful stories and powerful prayer; to all who are here providing testimony, thank you so much for having me and Michelle here. We are blessed to be here.

I want to begin by just saying a word to Mark Kelly, who’s here. We have been praying for Mark’s wife, Gabby Giffords, for many days now. But I want Gabby and Mark and their entire family to know that we are with them for the long haul, and God is with them for the long haul. (Applause.)

And even as we pray for Gabby in the aftermath of a tragedy here at home, we're also mindful of the violence that we're now seeing in the Middle East, and we pray that the violence in Egypt will end and that the rights and aspirations of the Egyptian people will be realized and that a better day will dawn over Egypt and throughout the world.

For almost 60 years, going back to President Eisenhower, this gathering has been attended by our President. It’s a tradition that I'm proud to uphold not only as a fellow believer but as an elected leader whose entry into public service was actually through the church. This may come as a surprise, for as some of you know, I did not come from a particularly religious family. My father, who I barely knew -- I only met once for a month in my entire life -- was said to be a non-believer throughout his life.

My mother, whose parents were Baptist and Methodist, grew up with a certain skepticism about organized religion, and she usually only took me to church on Easter and Christmas -- sometimes. And yet my mother was also one of the most spiritual people that I ever knew. She was somebody who was instinctively guided by the Golden Rule and who nagged me constantly about the homespun values of her Kansas upbringing, values like honesty and hard work and kindness and fair play.

And it’s because of her that I came to understand the equal worth of all men and all women, and the imperatives of an ethical life and the necessity to act on your beliefs. And it’s because of her example and guidance that despite the absence of a formal religious upbringing my earliest inspirations for a life of service ended up being the faith leaders of the civil rights movement.

There was, of course, Martin Luther King and the Baptist leaders, the ways in which they helped those who had been subjugated to make a way out of no way, and transform a nation through the force of love. But there were also Catholic leaders like Father Theodore Heshburg, and Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Muslim leaders and Hindu leaders. Their call to fix what was broken in our world, a call rooted in faith, is what led me just a few years out of college to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the Southside of Chicago. And it was through that experience working with pastors and laypeople trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace Him as my lord and savior. (Applause.)

Now, that was over 20 years ago. And like all of us, my faith journey has had its twists and turns. It hasn’t always been a straight line. I have thanked God for the joys of parenthood and Michelle’s willingness to put up with me. (Laughter.) In the wake of failures and disappointments I've questioned what God had in store for me and been reminded that God’s plans for us may not always match our own short-sighted desires.

And let me tell you, these past two years, they have deepened my faith. (Laughter and applause.) The presidency has a funny way of making a person feel the need to pray. (Laughter.) Abe Lincoln said, as many of you know, “I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.” (Laughter.)

Fortunately, I'm not alone in my prayers. Pastor friends like Joel Hunter and T.D. Jakes come over to the Oval Office every once in a while to pray with me and pray for the nation. The chapel at Camp David has provided consistent respite and fellowship. The director of our Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership’s office, Joshua DuBois -- young minister himself -- he starts my morning off with meditations from Scripture.

Most of all, I've got friends around the country -- some who I know, some who I don’t know, but I know their friends who are out there praying for me. One of them is an old friend named Kaye Wilson. In our family we call her Momma Kaye. And she happens to be Malia and Sasha’s godmother. And she has organized prayer circles for me all around the country. She started small with her own Bible study group, but once I started running for President and she heard what they were saying about me on cable, she felt the need to pray harder. (Laughter.) By the time I was elected President, she says, “I just couldn’t keep up on my own.” (Laughter.) “I was having to pray eight, nine times a day just for you.” (Laughter.) So she enlisted help from around the country.

It’s also comforting to know that people are praying for you who don’t always agree with you. Tom Coburn, for example, is here. He is not only a dear friend but also a brother in Christ. We came into the Senate at the same time. Even though we are on opposite sides of a whole bunch of issues, part of what has bound us together is a shared faith, a recognition that we pray to and serve the same God. And I keep praying that God will show him the light and he will vote with me once in a while. (Laughter.) It’s going to happen, Tom. (Laughter.) A ray of light is going to beam down. (Laughter.)

My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years. All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God. “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

As I travel across the country folks often ask me what is it that I pray for. And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general: Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office. Sometimes they’re specific: Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance -- (laughter) -- where there will be boys. (Laughter.) Lord, have that skirt get longer as she travels to that dance. (Laughter.)

But while I petition God for a whole range of things, there are a few common themes that do recur. The first category of prayer comes out of the urgency of the Old Testament prophets and the Gospel itself. I pray for my ability to help those who are struggling. Christian tradition teaches that one day the world will be turned right side up and everything will return as it should be. But until that day, we're called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable.

We've seen a lot of hardship these past two years. Not a day passes when I don't get a letter from somebody or meet someone who’s out of work or lost their home or without health care. The story Randall told about his father -- that's a story that a whole lot of Americans have gone through over these past couple of years.

Sometimes I can't help right away. Sometimes what I can do to try to improve the economy or to curb foreclosures or to help deal with the health care system -- sometimes it seems so distant and so remote, so profoundly inadequate to the enormity of the need. And it is my faith, then, that biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed. It’s faith that reminds me that despite being just one very imperfect man, I can still help whoever I can, however I can, wherever I can, for as long as I can, and that somehow God will buttress these efforts.

It also helps to know that none of us are alone in answering this call. It’s being taken up each and every day by so many of you -- back home, your churches, your temples and synagogues, your fellow congregants -- so many faith groups across this great country of ours.

I came upon a group recently called “charity: water,” a group that supports clean water projects overseas. This is a project that was started by a former nightclub promoter named Scott Harrison who grew weary of living only for himself and feeling like he wasn’t following Christ as well as he should.
And because of Scott’s good work, “charity: water” has helped 1.7 million people get access to clean water. And in the next 10 years, he plans to make clean water accessible to a hundred million more. That’s the kind of promoting we need more of, and that’s the kind of faith that moves mountains. And there’s stories like that scattered across this room of people who’ve taken it upon themselves to make a difference.

Now, sometimes faith groups can do the work of caring for the least of these on their own; sometimes they need a partner, whether it’s in business or government. And that’s why my administration has taken a fresh look at the way we organize with faith groups, the way we work with faith groups through our Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

And through that office, we’re expanding the way faith groups can partner with our government. We’re helping them feed more kids who otherwise would go hungry. We’re helping fatherhood groups get dads the support they need to be there for their children. We’re working with non-profits to improve the lives of people around the world. And we’re doing it in ways that are aligned with our constitutional principles. And in this work, we intend to expand it in the days ahead, rooted in the notions of partnership and justice and the imperatives to help the poor.

Of course there are some needs that require more resources than faith groups have at their disposal. There’s only so much a church can do to help all the families in need -- all those who need help making a mortgage payment, or avoiding foreclosure, or making sure their child can go to college. There’s only so much that a nonprofit can do to help a community rebuild in the wake of disaster. There’s only so much the private sector will do to help folks who are desperately sick get the care that they need.
And that's why I continue to believe that in a caring and in a just society, government must have a role to play; that our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics.

Over the past two years, the nature of these obligations, the proper role of government has obviously been the subject of enormous controversy. And the debates have been fierce as one side’s version of compassion and community may be interpreted by the other side as an oppressive and irresponsible expansion of the state or an unacceptable restriction on individual freedom.

That's why a second recurring theme in my prayers is a prayer for humility. Now, God answered this prayer for me early on by having me marry Michelle. (Laughter and applause.) Because whether it’s reminding me of a chore undone, or questioning the wisdom of watching my third football game in a row on Sunday, she keeps me humble. (Laughter.)

But in this life of politics when debates have become so bitterly polarized, and changes in the media lead so many of us just to listen to those who reinforce our existing biases, it’s useful to go back to Scripture to remind ourselves that none of has all the answers -- none of us, no matter what our political party or our station in life.

The full breadth of human knowledge is like a grain of sand in God’s hands. And there are some mysteries in this world we cannot fully comprehend. As it’s written in Job, “God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways. He does great things beyond our understandings.”

The challenge I find then is to balance this uncertainty, this humility, with the need to fight for deeply held convictions, to be open to other points of view but firm in our core principles. And I pray for this wisdom every day.

I pray that God will show me and all of us the limits of our understanding, and open our ears and our hearts to our brothers and sisters with different points of view; that such reminders of our shared hopes and our shared dreams and our shared limitations as children of God will reveal the way forward that we can travel together.

And the last recurring theme, one that binds all prayers together, is that I might walk closer with God and make that walk my first and most important task.

In our own lives it’s easy to be consumed by our daily worries and our daily concerns. And it is even easier at a time when everybody is busy, everybody is stressed, and everybody -- our culture is obsessed with wealth and power and celebrity. And often it takes a brush with hardship or tragedy to shake us out of that, to remind us of what matters most.

We see an aging parent wither under a long illness, or we lose a daughter or a husband in Afghanistan, we watch a gunman open fire in a supermarket -- and we remember how fleeting life can be. And we ask ourselves how have we treated others, whether we’ve told our family and friends how much we love them. And it’s in these moments, when we feel most intensely our mortality and our own flaws and the sins of the world, that we most desperately seek to touch the face of God.

So my prayer this morning is that we might seek His face not only in those moments, but each and every day; that every day as we go through the hustle and bustle of our lives, whether it’s in Washington or Hollywood or anywhere in between, that we might every so often rise above the here and now, and kneel before the Eternal; that we might remember, Kaye, the fact that those who wait on the Lord will soar on wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary, and they will walk and not faint.

When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people. And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will.

I say these prayers hoping they will be answered, and I say these prayers knowing that I must work and must sacrifice and must serve to see them answered. But I also say these prayers knowing that the act of prayer itself is a source of strength. It’s a reminder that our time on Earth is not just about us; that when we open ourselves to the possibility that God might have a larger purpose for our lives, there’s a chance that somehow, in ways that we may never fully know, God will use us well.

May the Lord bless you and keep you, and may He bless this country that we love. (Applause.)