The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
Questions are always interesting and we have them in many forms on the wireless. Once, in a debating society, we tried a new idea. Every person in the room wrote down a question on a piece of paper. Then the questions were put into the hat and mixed up and everybody had to take out a question and try to answer it. It was too bad if you happened to get your own question back.
One dear old lady opened up the question when it came the time for answers. She read out the question: ‘Is life worth living?” Oh!’ said she, ‘I couldn’t answer that.’ After a little coaxing she came out with the answer. Quite unconscious of the fact that she was uttering a pun, she said, ‘I suppose it depends on the liver’. Well, it does, in more ways than one.
We are all inclined to get a bit moody. And our moods take very different forms. Sometimes it takes the belligerent form and we go around banging doors and generally making a nuisance of ourselves. At other times we just sulk in a dour silence. An old man prided himself on his excellent health at his advanced age. As usual there were plenty of people who wanted a recipe for a long life. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s like this!’ When my wife and I were married we made an agreement. If ever one or the other of us got into a temper, the other partner was not to speak. If I was in a temper my wife was to leave me and go into the yard until I cooled down. If she was in a temper, I was to go into the yard until all was well again’. ‘What has that got to do with it?’ asked the questioner. ‘Well, you see’ said the old man, ‘I lived pretty much an open-air life’.
Part of our job is to live with people as we find them. You and I can never tell what ills of the soul or the body may be behind the moods that so often cloud human happiness.
What I really want to do is to say a comforting word to the folk who get moody. It could quite well be that the old lady was right. It depends on the liver. There’s quite a good commodity on the market for that trouble, judging by the advertisements!
But we should always remember that we are never at our best in our moods of depression and anxiety. We always have to stand by the judgement of our best hours and not of our worst moods.
Another thing it is good to remember is that moods are temporary. Old Peter McKenzie, a preacher of quaint ways and of another generation, used to shout, ‘Cheer up, it’s only a tunnel you’re in. There’s a hole out at the other end.” You and I could never see the glory of the stars if it were not for the darkness of the night.
Some people say the whole wide world is hard
Because their own small thoughts are cross and blue,
Yet you cannot say the road is bad
Because you have a pebble in your shoe.
I like the words of the great Apostle. In a time of great depression he said, ‘I never lose heart.’ l like still better the words of the Master. He said, ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world’.
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