My friend is blue.

What can I say to him worth saying?

He has his reasons – who doesn’t! Do his weigh more? Only if he lets them! “Nothing’s either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” Buck up, my friend! But chiding at this juncture would be unkind and unproductive. Who can be prodded out of a funk?

I too have been blue – often. My gloom recurs as regularly as the black horse on the merry-go-round. What do I want when I’m grim? To be left alone! No, please, I do not want to talk about it. Shut the door, please, on your way out.

Science may analyze moods but in their grip they’re as mysterious as they are mighty. They are our reality. Reason may remind us of the mischief of moods, beckoning us in dangerous directions – but how can Reason be sure! That the sun has risen on previous days hardly guarantees that it will rise tomorrow. “This too shall pass” is probably true, but what if “this too” doesn’t!

A child one might condole, rock in one’s arms, but sorrowing grown-ups I steer clear of. I seek invisibility, not sympathy, until the fit passes. So might my friend. Pity scalds!

If I can’t abandon my friend, let me tell him a story, to tug his mind elsewhere. Some people are good at this: their “bedside manner” enables them to chatter on pleasantly about this and that. My tongue knots. To bullshit my friend feels worse than silence, but silence also embarrasses. “This sucks,” I state the obvious – and that too rings hollow.

I’m clumsy at condoling and my incompetence irks. No one likes doing what they’re bad at. I procrastinate condolence calls till it feels “too late,” then berate myself for my cowardice. What is there to say when there’s “nothing to say”? So I say nothing – which is worse.

I’m bad at this – but I have friends who are worse. Nobody in their lives ever fails or dies. As soon as things go wrong, these friends go fishing. Another’s bad news chases them away like the plague, lest they catch it.

I have other friends who are drawn to grief like ambulance chasers to accidents. Their avidity feels creepy, as if they were vaunting their better luck.

Here is where a rigid code of conduct comes in handy. This is what one says and does under such circumstances, do not vary from the script. Obedience to convention is easy, like paying a toll. You pay and you’re done, case closed.

I wonder what my friend expects of me at this moment, only he won’t say. He grumbles, “Leave me alone,” but is that really what he wants? Maybe he’s testing our bond. A real friend wouldn’t leave me alone in this condition, his gloom murmurs. I linger awkwardly, annoyed at my indeterminacy.

Now (in my thoughts) I’m rebuking my friend for “carrying on.” It’s not the end of the world, for Chrissake! Get over it. “Get over it” is one of those useless adjurations like “Cheer up,” one blushes even to have thought. No one wants to wallow in the slough of despond!

My way of coping with this consternation is to flee my friend and write about it, as if writing exonerates. I disguise him of course – he won’t recognize himself – he might not even be a he. To translate distress into a missive is dismissive (sorry). It may be that all gratuitous making arises from a desire to square us with our discomfort. Some people bake muffins to say sorry, I paragraphs. Perversely, I welcome my friend’s blues for supplying me a topic.