The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
To be stuck on the road in the rain with a motor bicycle that wouldn’t go was my own fault, of course, for not remembering that motor bikes need a drop of petrol. When I reached a garage eventually I was hot in more ways than one. There were two lads on the job and while one of them fixed up the bicycle the other one tried to fix me up.
‘Come on, chum,’ said he. ‘It’s not as bad as all that. Give us a smile.’ l must have looked grumpy. Reminds me that the other day as I was getting petrol the attendant at the pump looked at the bicycle, ‘Two-stroke! Wouldn’t have them. Rode them once, but never again. They’re like women, never two days the same.’
Young Charlie once made his mother very indignant by losing his temper completely and after being punished was ordered off to bed and told to pray that his temper might be reformed. His mother tiptoed to the door of his room to make sure that her commands were carried out and the prayer she heard shook her up: ‘O Lord, please take away my bad temper. And while you are about it you might as well take mother’s too.’
No! This is not a crack at the women. It just happens that that’s the way I heard the story. Father can go off the handle too, as I know quite well. A want of patience, of kindness, generosity, courage, of courtesy, are all symbolized in one sudden flash of temper. The pity is that it is a misuse of an emotional drive whose right use is a necessary part of character.
We all get moody at times. Sometimes these moods have their roots in physical causes. There was a matron in a hospital once and when she found one of the nurses very trying and irritating, she gave her a dose of salts. When she found all the nurses irritating and trying she took a dose of salts herself.
It is quite true that when you are physically tired or out of sorts you are much more sensitive to life’s irritations. People who are in constant pain are often irritable and hard to live with. But many of our troubles come from outside. We are a family, bound together in the bundle of life and we have to learn to live together as a family. In the family there are all sorts of temperaments and our job is to try to fit our lives in with other people. We sometimes hurt each other and our reaction to hurt is to hurt somebody else.
As I see it, life is hard enough without any of us making it harder. We are none of us so very good, but that a little patience and sympathy and encouragement, instead of criticism, might make us a great deal better. When you feel like Dickens’ Mrs. Gummidge: ‘The lone, lorn creature, with everything going contrary with her and she going contrary with everybody’, just sit down quietly and try to see yourself as you appear to others. It will be a humbling experience.
The Apostle Paul once said, ‘Love is never irritated.’ Maybe that’s the secret. I must learn to love my fellowmen.
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