Human suffering is physiological, normal, natural, certain, necessary, and usually has no true objective cause that can justify it. When in a state of physical and mental rest, human beings naturally tend toward this state of suffering, and this is the mechanism that nature has selected to compel us to act, physically or mentally, so that we can, precisely, return to feeling well and be useful and productive members of humanity.
Without this suffering, we would not have come as far as we have. We would not have gone to the Moon; we would still be living in trees, eating berries and drinking from streams, and we would have no need for anything else.
Suffering serves to guide and stimulate our physical and mental actions. In fact, we do the things we enjoy doing because they make us feel good, improve our mood, and make us happy.
Therefore, we should not try to find a cause for this suffering. It is unnecessary—a waste of time and a waste of money. Instead, if we want to feel good and be happy, we need to act: socialize, think, plan, create, work, help, love, solve problems, explore, and so on.
The Theory of Mood represents an innovative and profoundly useful perspective for understanding the human condition. Unlike common views that regard distress as an anomaly to be eliminated, this theory interprets it as a fundamental biological function—an internal signal that drives us to act, to change, and to create. Human beings do not suffer because they are broken; they suffer because they are alive. Rather than being suppressed or medicalized at all costs, a “bad” mood is understood as a call to transformation: the worse you feel, the more you are driven—if you wish to survive and regain balance—to do something new, to make plans, and to set creative thinking in motion.
This perspective is valuable because it restores dignity and meaning to suffering, freeing it from being viewed solely as something negative.
Indeed, it is often from discomfort that movement, inquiry, and even love emerge. This theory is therefore an existential resource, because it teaches us not to fear restlessness, but to listen to it and translate it into action.
What improves our mood?
friendship, solidarity, research, exploration, action, creativity, curiosity, socialization, discovery, fantasy, inventiveness, work, sport, imagination, play, family, planning, sharing, altruism, food, sex, love…
But also alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, psychotropic drugs…
(Not money, fame, success)
To avoid our intrinsic (and physiological) suffering, created and selected specifically by nature (let’s not look for causes that do not exist and related ineffective solutions), we must act, operate, move, get busy, and the purpose, for us, is not the action itself, as we think and believe, but only the positive effect it has on our mood.
We do something because it makes us feel good, nothing else, this is the only purpose for us, the real usefulness of the action itself does not interest us, this interests, and is useful, only to nature.
Love
Have you fallen in love? Very well, no problem. Live it to the fullest, play with it and take it easy: it will only make you feel good. It’s only the first part of a couple’s relationship, the purely selfish one, and that’s how you should experience it: like a game or a dream.
It’s not love, as we all know, because love is something else and mood sets the rules, but let’s keep it that way. It’s just a beautiful moment of your life.
You don’t need the truth in the first part of your relationship, you can push it aside; you know it’s there and you can use it whenever you need. You should only use the truth to avoid making mistakes, hurting others or yourself and creating useless stress or suffering.
You need the truth in the second part of your relationship, instead: it’s the altruistic phase, or the concrete and mature family phase. Only the truth can allow a family to grow in harmony, joy and serenity; not dreams, false illusions and castles in the air.
Of course, this way of life is something else, and it surely is less beautiful and exciting, but it’s still positive and concrete. You can dream when you need to dream, but you have to burst your bubble and be realistic at some point.
Consider the beginning of the relationship simply as a game, an exciting game that makes you happy and nothing more; you’re just a happy person that is playing. You can call it ‘love’ and enjoy it as it is, even if it isn’t love, but call it ‘mood’ when necessary and you’ll see that you can’t go wrong that way.
Interview by Barbara Bertasi on the L’Arena newspaper.
Cold, witty, blunt, almost cynical on the myth of the couple’s love; a connection resulting from a personal need, a selfishness that unites us but then divides us, closely related to a mood that might be better for everyone if we managed to love the only thing that belongs to us: ourselves and our unique and short but wonderful life.
This is how ‘Love and Mood’, a non-fiction novel by Federico Leso, self-published on paper and in digital format, ends: with a positive exclamation and an invitation to express again our spirituality and humanity.
A book consisting of 178 pages to be read confronting with oneself as well as with the author, a doctor from 118 in Verona, whose job also taught him how to notice, in certain excessive treatments towards a loved one, apparent acts of love which are actually selfish rejections of grief and mourning.
‘Love and Mood’, he explains, is a critical essay written in dialogue form, in which the author is confronted by someone else, an imaginary friend, applying the adversarial principle to the topics addressed in the book, mainly the couple’s love in its various declination, including family, but also many other aspects of life that might seem trivial but in fact are important to make us feel good and not be dominated by ideas that might make us uncomfortable, inadequate and, when speaking of love, disappointed by the fact that the feeling upon which we focused so much, that should make the world go round, isn’t making it go round at all, or rather, in the right direction for several reasons.
The book suggests some; for all of them, however, there is one important rule on which Leso elaborated his own theory: mood, that can improve depending on our behaviours and regulates everything we do; even love is linked to this state of mind.
Interview by Silvia Beltrami on the Telearena Channel’s Evening News
A realistic and somewhat humorous book that makes one meditate; a good and thought-provoking read about the couple’s relationships, from falling in love to ultimate love, family and separation… At the heart of the book, the theory of mood as a biological function…
federicoleso@virgilio.it
