The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
You will forgive me if I come back again to this job of moving house. It’s an amazing thing how much useless lumber we gather up during the years. That’s one of the advantages to having to move at least every five years as I have to do; you have to take stock of what you have gathered. Some of it you want to keep and a great deal of it has to be thrown out.
I am what you might call a ‘hoarder’. I was brought up on the old idea of ‘keep a thing long enough and a use for it will turn up.’ My wife doesn’t take too kindly to my ideas, so she waits until I go out somewhere and then she goes on the rampage. One day she tried on this idea but I came back sooner than she expected and I found quite a lot of things in the bin which I promptly retrieved. Truth to tell, only a very few of the things will go with me.
When I was a boy I got a lot of fun out of rummaging through the things in the attic of our house. There was a pile of old books and magazines and we used to pass the time fighting again the battle of the Boer War. There was a cage for a parrot too and I held on to that for years in a forlorn hope that one day I would get a parrot. I never did. Bits and pieces of Meccano sets, old Hornby trains, bits of wood of all shapes and sizes that would one day make toys - these and many more odds and ends littered the lumber room.
There are a great many people who clutter up their lives with lumber. It’s bad enough having a lumber room in the house but it’s a terrible thing to carry a lumber room about with you in your mind. Some habits are just a bit like lumber and some memories are even more so.
I seldom have to go to the doctor now, thank God, but I have noticed on occasions that a doctor’s surgery seems to bring out the lumber. A dentist’s waiting room has something of the same effect, only somehow teeth aren’t so interesting as operations. When two women get together and talk about their illnesses or two men compare notes on their operations, it’s just bringing out the lumber. Surely life has more interesting memories than that. Anything that becomes an obsession is just junk and you had better clear it out.
Speaking of doctors reminds me of the dear old lady who used to get a bottle from the doctor. She had had the same bottle for weeks. Then one day when her grandson came home with the bottle it was different and it was even better than the others. The next week she demanded another bottle of the ‘good’ stuff but the doctor was puzzled for he hadn’t changed the medicine at all. He got hold of the wee fellow and asked him what had happened. After some coaxing he got the truth. The previous week the wee fellow had accidentally spilled some of the medicine when he took out the cork to smell it. He was afraid to go home and tell the truth so he filled it up with bog water. Grannie’s imagination had done the rest.
Imagination can make the mind like a dusty attic filled with old lumber - the memories of our bad days, the memories of the people who have hurt us. The memories of our troubles. Let us make a clean sweep of the whole lot.
The Apostle Paul had a word of good advice on this matter. He said: ‘Whatsoever things are true and honest and pure and lovely - think on these things.’
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