There are days when I walk down the street, and everything is peaches and cream. I smile. People smile back. And there are days when I walk down the street, and everything is gloomy and downcast. I frown. People frown back. Like a coin has been flipped.
It’s true there are one or two tiggers to these phenomena. One is so British it’s often taken for granted. The marked difference between a warm, sunny summer day and a chilly, grey overcast winter one can be massive. Fresh green leaves, flowering plants and dry footpaths are on one side of the coin. Bare trees, barren hedge rows and cold puddles underfoot are on the other.
Those are the environmental factors that play with us poor humans as if we were puppets. It’s so much easier to feel optimistic and upbeat when the weather treats us kindly. Air, light, and heat cast a magical spell over all of us. We spend our savings, and we jump on aeroplanes to seek out these influences.
My thoughts stray into the realms of the unknown. I can be analytical and scientific about what sets feelings or moods for a day. What I see and hear can defy simple explanation. Dig deep enough and logic can prevail but not always. Not on every occasion.
I walk down the street perfectly cheerful about the world and its ways, at a time when the world kicks back. Equally, I walk down the street gloomy and pessimistic with the world and its ways, at a time when the world beams happily. What’s going on? Is it me?
An unexplainable factor is interfering. It’s as if I’ve flipped from a good mojo to a bad mojo. There it is. A word that wraps up an intangible feeling. A mysterious material hanging in the ether. My mojo. Or the mojo of those around me. The term is in common usage, so it must be meaningful in some useful sense. We certainly sprinkle the word into conversations when it’s clear that something magical has been lost or is drifting away.
My conclusion is that its one of those phenomena that just must be accepted. It’s written into nature. It’s an example of random chance in everyday life. It’s a probability that can’t be calculated. Even the most sophisticated computation isn’t going to tell that my lottery ticket numbers are winners on any one day, or not.
Today, my mojo and me are happy. But I can’t say much about what might happen tomorrow.
John Vincent 