Far more than we're inclined to accept and sometimes even realize we are creatures of mood, that is our sense of our value as human beings is prone to extraordinary fluctuation at times. We know how to tolerate ourselves. The future seems benevolent. We can bear who we are in the eyes of others, and we can forgive ourselves for the desperate errors of the past. And then at other points, the mood dips and we lament most of what we've ever done. We see ourselves as natural targets for contempt. We feel undeserving, guilty, and weak and headed for retribution and disaster. But it can be very hard to grasp what causes our moods to shift. A day that started with energy and hope can by lunchtime end up mired in self-hatred and tearfulness. A sure sense that we finally turned the corner and are on the way to better things can be replaced at speed by an alternative certainty that we are a cosmic error. We cannot, it appears, ever prevent our moods from being subject to change. But what is open to us all is to learn how to manage the change more effectively so that our downturns can be ever so slightly more gentle or sadness more containable, and our inconstancy less shameful in our eyes.