One trait that I find getting more common with each passing day is that people are not being themselves. They are constantly trying to become another personality — a transformation which is replete with behavioural and psychological issues.

Around this time, it is usual for newspapers and readers to recall the year that has past by. Some years are tinged with good memories, some years are indeed annus horribilus.

The word inhibition is a very loaded term replete with varied imagery. To some it may connote something very mild, such as speaking in public. To others, it may connote things much more adventurous, such as streaking in public. Whatever be the benchmark, there is nobody I have met who does not have inhibitions.

All of us have fears; there is no one in the world who is without fears. Indeed, to fear is to be mortal. The rich eternally fear whether their investments will grow faster than the rate of inflation and whether their children will manage their legacies well. The middle-class in turn fear sickness and the lower classes fear poverty. The farmer fears a failed monsoon. The actor fears a box-office flop. And the politician fears the verdict of the electorate.

Some of the most ground-breaking theories in physics have emerged from what are called thought-experiments. Contrary to perception, such work did not involve massive banks of computers or huge laboratories. They involved just simple but profound thoughts and the goal was to explore the potential consequences of the principle in question. Most of Einstein’s work was based on such thought-experiments, of which the most famous occurred at the age of 16.

I entered a bookshop last week and I was struck by a trend I find in all such stores these days. There are not just shelves, but entire sections, devoted to books chalking out programmes to deal with the problems of life.

On a quiet Monday, when the nation was in bandh mode, I went along an interesting stream of thought. I believe it was Albert Einstein who said that the simplest questions have the toughest answers. My thoughts went out to the genius when I was adding a new wrinkle to the eternal metaphysical question: Who am I?

One of the main causes of unhappiness is that most of us choose to dwell, or daydream, about the past or the future. We do not wish to live in the present and leverage the most from it.

I realised many summers ago that the way you react can often shape the outcome of events. Few of us understand this fact and most of us go blithely through life carrying on as we have always done; never re-living, or re-learning, from our actions. And as explained in my tenth column, our acts also affect our Destiny in the long run.

Last week, I was in the Lake District in north-west England being interviewed by the BBC. It was conducted across two days, not in an indoor studio but as we rambled along the most picturesque part of the famed British countryside. For those of you steeped in literary knowledge, you may recall that this part of England was home to the Romantic poets; Shelley, Wordsworth and Coleridge, who are the best remembered of the lot.