CAPTIVE!

In June 2010 – keep that date behind your ear for later, it’s significant – I got a worrying phone call from my profoundly hard of hearing, 82-year-old Dad, as he sat in his small, sheltered-housing bungalow, “FRED! ‘av got bees or wasps or summat, can you come and have a look?” Now of course, all I know about wasps is that they make a buzzing noise and they hurt if they sting you. Pretty much all anybody really needs to know about such things in my honest opinion.

So it was that forty minutes later I found myself up a wobbly stepladder, gingerly approaching the loft hatch in his bungalow kitchen. He’d explained to me that the bees/wasps were not evidently there all the time, “They must come and go like”. I had spent the previous time painstakingly pacing slowly around the bungalow, listening intently in the ‘head cocked on one side’ manner you normally associate with aging bloodhounds. No tell-tale buzz, or even hum could be heard, anywhere! Opening the loft hatch rather like a bomb disposal expert would, when approaching a suspect package, I gently prised open the hatch a few centimetres and peered in with my torch, there was…nothing! No wasp nest to be seen.

In response to my dad’s insistence, further fruitless wobbly ladder investigations were made on the outside guttering front and back. “Do you think they might be in the chimney at the top of the roof or summat?” “Well Dad, if they are, I am not going on the roof to see tonight, I’m not Spiderman!” So eventually, after much reassurance, I eventually left it with me telling him to, “keep an ear out and let me know if they come back”.

A few days passed, then Dad rang me again,” They’re back! Can you come round now?” “No Dad, I am at work at the mo, I’ll be round later”. I went later. Nothing there. No buzzing emanating from anywhere. “How odd”, I thought, “The noise must be pretty loud, or he wouldn’t have heard it? Curiouser and curiouser!”

Finally, all was revealed. I had just settled down to a World Cup football match live from South Africa – it’s June 2010 remember- when the phone went. “They’re back Fred!” So, jumping in the car in the manner adopted by the dear departed Adam West in the old Batman series that I loved as a kid, I screeched to a halt at his (my dad’s not Adam West’s!) and ran in the house.

Sure enough, there it was, a constant, loud, droning, humming, buzzing noise BUT coming not from the roof but from the sound of the football crowd at the world cup game he was watching on telly. AHA!

You may remember, it was the South African World Cup that first introduced us all to the dreaded African vuvuzela horn. A large number of vuvuzela ‘players’ in the crowd meant all you could hear was a constant, loud, droning, buzzing noise over the commentary. Hence my dad convincing himself he had a wasp nest in his house. It irked him for days after. The last thing he said as I opened his front door to go was, “You know what Fred, I am a dozy bugger!” I just replied, “Aren’t we all dad sometimes?”

Thoughts can be tricky blighters can’t they. We get led down the garden path by our own thoughts sometimes, don’t we? Often leading to negative or even, on thankfully much rarer occasions, tragic consequences.

If, like me, you have ever been through a period of severe depression, you may have been helped by a psychological therapy called cognitive behaviour therapy or CBT. Depression is a monstrously difficult thing to grapple with in life, and everybody who has experienced it, is helped by different strategies at different times. There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution, it’s all about keeping trying and not giving up until the problem gradually subsides, at times agonisingly slowly, and eventually ‘normal service is resumed’ in our lives.

CBT works from a perspective that we can sometimes develop negative thoughts that can lead on eventually to us also developing negative feelings, effectively like when a cog wheel turns and subsequently turns the cog wheel next to it.

CBT did help me at that time a lot but, surprisingly, what I also felt was, “It’s suggesting I deal with thoughts in the way that the Bible has been telling me to for years!”

The starting point is that, just because a thought has entered your head, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is true, or that it should be automatically and unquestioningly accepted and followed through. Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 10:5 we are encouraged to “take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ”. In the movies when soldiers are on guard somewhere, they challenge every person who approaches whatever it is they are guarding with, “Halt! Who goes there, friend or foe?”

We need to put our thoughts through that kind of process sometimes, treat a thought like it’s in a court room if you like. Is this quantifiably true? Am I really like that, what is the evidence from not just myself but also from people who know me well?

Challenging a negative, untrue thought, is sometimes like trying to dislodge a heavy boulder. At first it always feels like it can’t be moved despite all our best efforts. Then it starts moving slightly - if we keep pushing of course - then it rocks, then it finally moves sufficiently so we can get it out of the way.

We are all no doubt aware of the tragic loss of Sinead O’Connor. Sadly, as is often the case it seems, she was clearly ACTUALLY loved far, far more than she ever thought she was. If only the truth of that could have broken through to her in her loneliness and pain.

What negative thoughts are “buzzing around” in your head at the moment? Take some time, take some space, have some conversations with people who love you and know you well. Get to the reality of what you are thinking. Even if you are going through the hardest time, try to cling on to what Maya Angelou once said,” Every storm runs out of rain”.

By Fred Wright 16th August 2023