A World of No Excitement

Mankind has learnt to respond to the environment and the internal changes that take place within himself. This response is so crucial, that it has enabled the survival of our kind. The response that I am talking about here is a form of arousal, that drives us towards or away from any stimulant. What happens when this kind of response is not evoked? Let me paint you a picture.

Jack wakes up and sees the wall clock right in front of him, every day. He sees the minute hand at 12 and the hour hand pointing at 7, every day. Then comes the shower, the coffee, the newspaper, and the breakfast, every day. He is so used to his routine that his life simply lacks the glint of excitement. Every day is the same. The neighbors gossip that he hasn’t smiled in a very long time. A loner. A weirdo. But was Jack always like this? During his college days, Jack was a mountain biker. The ups and downs that he and his bike used to encounter, was the drive that kept him going. Each moment was different. The turns, the steeps, the ascents, and descents made the sport thrilling. After college, a job happened. Routine happened. He got so habituated to his routine that everything got boring and nothing elicited a state of elation in him. Gone were the days of biking. His life has no incoming stimulation to facilitate excitement.

Now, coming back to the responsiveness to stimuli. Jack’s getting a repeated dose of the same stimuli every day. His neurons are giving up. They produce less and less “happy” molecules, ultimately resulting in a state of almost no arousal. This happy molecule is a neurotransmitter called serotonin which plays a role in the regulation of mood. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers in our brains. In extreme cases, habituation can lead to depression, where no stimulation causes an elicitation of response. In such cases, anti-depressant pills are taken so that serotonin lingers in the space between two neurons for longer durations. This can help pass the message on to the next neuron in the circuit and ultimately evoke a response.

Perhaps Jack should seriously consider breaking himself free from the clutches of habituation and go mountain biking once in a while so that he gets sensitized at every turn, every steep, every ascent and descent!