Tag: control

How we caused a plague of frogs

My wife, Alison, could be called a batrachophile, or a ranidaphile or, more comprehensibly, a frogophile. They’re all terms (somewhat made-up) for a lover of frogs. Alison doesn’t quite love frogs. She’s not into kissing them hoping they’ll change into a handsome prince. But she likes them enough that if we’re out for a late evening walk and she sees a frog sitting on the footpath or the road, she’ll hurry over to pick it up and make it safe before it’s flattened. (Then she’ll expect me to hold her hand again. That’s a test of love.)

So, when I dug the beginnings of a pond in our back garden, and it rained, and our clay soil didn’t let the water drain, and the frogs filled it with frog spawn, Alison called a halt on my construction work. ‘You can’t do any more for now. You mustn’t disturb the frogs.’ Therefore I began work on a second pond, so that eventually I could move the frogs to a new home and finish the first pond.

Finally both ponds were built and the frogs and Alison were happy. Except we now had a lot of frogs. So much so that when Alison mowed our grass I had to walk in front of the lawnmower and shuffle my feet from side to side in case the whirling blades decapitated a frog. However, most frogs weren’t hiding in the grass waiting to die. They went roaming. One evening our doorbell rang. I answered, and one of our neighbours stood there holding two bulging plastic bags. He held out the bags, saying ‘I believe these are yours’, and walked off. I looked inside. Each bag was filled with wriggling frogs. So, you know you have a plague of frogs when special measures are needed before cutting the grass, and when neighbours carry bags of frogs back to your door.

That’s when I suggested we should have fish in our larger pond. I thought gazing at fish swimming lazily in our pond would be relaxing. But my frog-loving Alison saw a problem: ‘Fish will eat the tadpoles’.

I’m not someone who takes every statement for granted. ‘Maybe fish actually don’t eat tadpoles’, I thought. So I searched the internet and found there were several organisations dedicated to preserving frogs. I called one of them, and explained I wanted fish for our pond but my wife said they’d eat the tadpoles, but surely that wasn’t true. The delightful lady who’d answered the phone hesitated, perhaps deciding if I needed marriage advice or frog advice.

Then she uttered the words I didn’t want to hear: ‘Your wife is right. In general, fish will eat any food they can get in their mouths, which will certainly include tadpoles.’

‘Really?’ I said, ‘But lots of people have fish…’

‘Yes, but then they don’t have tadpoles.’

Thwarted. But my frog-preserving-advisor wasn’t quite finished.

‘I don’t know if I should be telling you this…’ she continued slowly. ‘But, out in the wild, only about ten out of every thousand tadpoles ever survive to become frogs. If you protect tadpoles from all predators, you’ll be overrun with frogs.’

Yes! I reported back to Alison what I’d heard from an official source, and the idea of fish with very small mouths got onto the agenda. (I’ll report on the outcome later.)

It was only later that I grasped a principle illustrated by our plague of frogs: What you don’t control may soon control you. What you don’t get on top of may one day get on top of you.

Here are some examples I’ve seen.

Clutter    I’ve visited people whose homes were hard to navigate. There was ‘stuff’ everywhere. In Fred’s house, newspapers and magazines were heaped on almost every flat surface: on counter tops, tables, ledges, chairs, sofas, and, of course, on the floor. Fred lifted a pile off a chair for me, and I followed a narrow path between the heaps of paper to reach it. In Willie’s home, years of paper and no-longer used objects were stacked on free-standing shelves. When one set of shelves was filled, another set was installed. They stuck out into the room at right angles, so I had to weave this way and that to reach a seat. I visited a lawyer whose office was a little better than those homes, but only a little. All his ‘briefs’ (legal paper work, not underwear!) were on the floor. To get to the chair in front of his desk required exaggerated steps to clear small mountains. I felt I was treading between land mines.

These folks may have seen their heaps as organisation. But it was out of control. They’d kept buying new things without getting rid of old things. More came in; nothing went out. Clutter now controlled them.

Addictions    We could talk about many things under this heading, all of them sensitive issues. I’m not competent to write about addictive medications. My only advice is do what your doctor says, no more and no less.

But the problem for the addicted young man with whom I was having coffee was not about medications. He was 25, hoping to get married, have children, own a house – all delightful things. But he was tens of thousands of pounds in debt because of gambling. He’d begun using online gambling sites as amusement. But as he lost money he gambled more than he could afford to try and recoup his losses. He just lost more. On he went, month after month until he’d emptied his bank account and maxed out every source of credit. Now his hopes and dreams were all jeopardised by the need to pay off a huge debt. He’d failed to control minor gambling so it became major gambling and now controlled him.

About ten years ago, the United States’ FBI and equivalent agencies in other countries conducted a major international investigation into online child pornography. They prosecuted people who’d used the ‘dark web’, evil sites with illegal and disgusting images of young children. The users thought they could never be identified, a remarkably naïve and stupid idea since many used their personal credit cards to pay for access. Many held prominent roles in business and civic life, and some in their churches. They became known to their families and communities only when they were arrested and went to prison. I’m guessing, but I imagine they never thought their habit would take them so deep into the dark world of child exploitation. It was a habit that should never have begun, but once begun gripped them. Only being arrested and jailed stopped it.

Workload    I’ve written before about the friend who could never break away from the office until so late into the evening that he wouldn’t get home until half way through the meal with friends he’d invited for dinner. And, when it was family vacation time, he wouldn’t join his wife and children until midway through the first week. He couldn’t, likely wouldn’t, control his workload; so it controlled him.

Tidiness    In a sense this is the opposite of the ‘clutter’ problem with which I began this list. But tidiness has to be controlled as much as clutter does.

Alison and I visited our friend Noreen. She showed us round her modest-sized home. Everything was neat and clean, very neat and very clean. There were no stray cups or plates lying around the kitchen; in the bedroom no clothes strewn over a chair and no overcrowding of the wardrobe; no cushions out of place on the sofa in the lounge. We had to ask: ‘How do you keep everything so perfectly in place like this?’ Noreen’s answer was simple: ‘If I buy something new, I remove something old.’ That’s why her wardrobe and chest of drawers would never overflow. It was hard not to admire Noreen’s ruthlessness but, over time, it wore down her mental health. Her tidiness was out of control.

At their invitation, we visited Chris and Sally just one day after they moved into a new home. I’d protested we shouldn’t visit so soon, but had been assured it would be fine. It wasn’t just fine; the place looked like a show home. Nothing was out of place. At a quiet moment Sally gave away the secret. At the old house, Chris hadn’t allowed a single item to be packed for removal without it being labelled exactly where it was to go in the new place. On arrival, the removers opened the boxes, and laid each item down where prescribed. That’s why, when we visited next day, there were no unpacked boxes, no unhung pictures, nothing lacking a location. It was all perfect. Wasn’t that wonderful? No, it really wasn’t. Time showed that the obsession with tidiness had got out of hand, with serious consequences for our friends.

Something very different had got out of hand for George beside whom I worked in a government office. He spent the first 45 minutes of each day decorating his ‘to-do’ list with fancy calligraphy writing. Impressive, but it wasn’t what he was being paid for, and most of us wished he’d just get on with his work.

Alison and I have been tidy enough but well short of obsessive about it. When the children were small, we hung a plaque on the wall in our kitchen. It read: ‘Our home is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy’. That was our philosophy. And our children thrived.

Who’d have thought tidiness could ever be a problem? But uncontrolled tidiness can end up controlling us. It had sad outcomes for most of those I’ve mentioned.

I could list more examples, but I think the point is clear. What you don’t control may soon control you. Some impulses are good, but when uncontrolled they take us to bad places. Self-control isn’t easy. It often runs counter to our desires. But where would the sheep be who graze on land close to a clifftop if there was no fence? Healthy self-control is our fence, saving us from the disaster that uncontrolled impulses would wreak on our lives.

So, did we end up with fish in our pond? The answer is ‘yes’ but only for a short time. We bought minnows because their mouths were so small a good number of tadpoles could hide and survive among the plants we’d put in the pond. And that worked. But we hadn’t allowed for other factors. One, after only a few weeks I gazed at shoals of tiny minnows in our pond. I’d bought only a few, so where did all the rest come from? I hadn’t known that minnows reproduce every four to five days, and some lay up to 700 eggs per spawn. Two, we didn’t have running water or enough oxygen in our pond, which is especially bad for minnows. Three, wading birds feasting at the edge of our pond had a good time; the minnows didn’t. Four, some kinds of minnows eat their own young. I call that incestuous cannibalism.

The minnows disappeared, and have never been replaced. But other vertebrates have moved in: newts. They’re fascinating little creatures who live in and out of water. We didn’t import them; they imported themselves into our pond. They’re welcome to stay.

We do what we can

Flying over the Congo jungle is a mesmerizing experience. The WWF quotes the rainforest’s size at 500 million acres, which is a larger footprint than the whole of Alaska. All I could see was mile after mile of trees stretching into the distance.

Our group of about eight was in a small Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) plane, visiting places missionaries had established as ‘stations’ in the 1800s. We decided to abandon one planned visit because fighting had broken out nearby. Instead we’d go a day early to another village where there was no trouble. The pilot invited me to sit up front beside him.

We arrived over our new destination, a place no-one had flown into for many months. It was only what some would call ‘a hole in the jungle’ but as well as homes it had a church, a small hospital and a dirt airstrip. The pilot circled the plane several times, studying that airstrip. He was nervous about landing, or, more accurately, about whether we could take off again. Jungle encroaches on airstrips quickly from all sides, and though the pilot had been told the villagers had cut back the forest it didn’t look like they’d cut enough. He could land the plane, but he’d need more space to take off. We might be stuck there for days.

He decided to go for it, and down we went. The landing was bumpy, but no more than usual on dirt, and the plane came to rest at the end of the airstrip where enthusiastic villagers were waiting for us. The engine was switched off.

It was at exactly that moment about thirty men in army uniforms emerged from the jungle. Quickly they encircled our plane with their automatic weapons pointed at us. My front location got a perfect view of a trestle-mounted machine gun aimed right at the cockpit.

There are many militias in Congo, and there was no immediate way to know who these ‘soldiers’ were. Even government troops could be hostile. And these guys were seriously hostile.

A couple of our number got out to speak with them. A few minutes later they told us we must all get out. We clambered from the plane, and were marched at gunpoint towards the village. The people we’d come to see were super-excited, and sang and rushed back and forth in ways that clearly bothered our captors. My fear was that if they upset them too much, those soldiers might start shooting at random. Thankfully, it never came to that.

We got to the village, received a great welcome from village and church leaders and held a short service in the open air with gun wielding soldiers surrounding all of us. We were given food, and visited the hospital which, tragically, was very broken down but still the only facility which could care for people who might have walked for days through the jungle to get help.

At some point, a call of nature had to be answered. There was a toilet a couple of hundred yards away, but I wasn’t allowed to go alone. My soldier escort kept his weapon pointed in my direction even at my most vulnerable moment.

Apparently we’d aroused great suspicion because our changed plan meant we’d arrived on a day when we weren’t authorised. We couldn’t leave unless a commander from over the river permitted it. By late afternoon we were getting perilously near to sunset, and we couldn’t take off in the dark. Our MAF pilot was seriously afraid an overnight stay would result in his plane being stripped of essential components. That wouldn’t be good for the plane and not good for us because then we couldn’t leave at all.

With only half an hour before daylight would end, news arrived that the commander said we could go. ‘We’re leaving now’ said the pilot, with great emphasis on ‘now’. We were inside the plane in five minutes. The engine started, the plane lined up, and we set off down that airstrip at full power. No-one was sure we’d get into the air before we reached the jungle at the far end. The trees seemed to rush towards us. It looked impossible to miss them. Last second, the pilot pulled back on the stick and up we went, skimming the trees. We were airborne! I glanced out the window, and leaves from the jungle were hanging from the wing tips.

That visit was memorable. But, over the years, the suffering of ordinary people in Congo has been far more memorable than finding myself on the wrong end of soldiers’ guns.

What I also learned from that dramatic and life-threatening experience was a hard but important lesson: We are not as much in control of our lives as we think.

I have a passionate dislike of time management and life management books. Not because they lack any wisdom, but because of the core assumptions almost all of them contain: that we are masters of our destiny, and we can reach our goals if only we order our lives rightly.

I have an ethical problem with that, and believe there’s a major flaw in the logic.

My ethical problem is the inherent selfishness. One book praised the boss who had his secretary screen all incoming calls, and promise he’d return them between 4.00 and 5.00 in the afternoon. He wouldn’t call at any other time. That practice was praised as great time management. Yes, great for that boss, but not great for those told they had to make their schedules fit round his if they were to get his attention. I’ve seen similar advice given for answering emails. And I’ve known people willing to meet others only between hours they defined; if you couldn’t meet then, you didn’t meet at all.

Arrogant people must think they can make the world revolve around them. What if we universalized that form of time management, but all chose different times of the day to be available? Interactions would be impossible.

The flaw in much time and life management thinking is this. Let’s liken it to driving a fairground dodgem (bumper) car. And let’s imagine no other cars are on the track or they’re all stationary. Then driving would be easy. But real life isn’t a static dodgem track. It’s a dodgem track full of people driving crazily, right into our path, crashing us from the side and from behind, jarring our bones and almost toppling us over.

The hard reality is that we can’t regiment the world around us. No matter how good we are at strategizing, planning, organizing, life refuses to be ordered or controlled. The messy world we navigate has events and people crashing into us from all angles. None of us on that plane imagined we’d be surrounded by armed soldiers in a clearing in the jungle. No-one has ready-made strategies for extreme events like that, nor for hundreds of parallel though ordinary happenings in our lives.

So, what do we do? We can’t make problems melt away, and not every circumstance can have a happy ending. Therefore we do what we can. We try not to freeze or panic, or to sit down and moan about the unfairness of life. Probably most of us have surrendered to reactions like these sometimes. But nothing good comes that way.

My ‘we do what we can’ philosophy kicked in during the final stages of my theology degree. A large part of my overall mark depended on a 20,000 word dissertation. My future plans for PhD study also rested on that dissertation. But I was getting nowhere. After months of work the project would not come together. Then one day, out of the blue, a whole new angle on the subject flashed into my mind. But following that intuition would mean starting all over again. I described the new idea to Alison, but added, ‘There just isn’t enough time to do that now.’

‘Are you sure? What if you just start and see what you can do?’

She was right. And I did just start. The research went well, and the writing went well. There was a crisis when a friend typing my draft to dissertation standard suddenly went into hospital. But I found another typist, and the dissertation was handed in with two days to spare. It got good marks, and I was admitted to the PhD programme. In this world we don’t sail on a calm sea. We face storms. Some are minor and some major. Some won’t harm us and some threaten everything. In the Congo jungle I wasn’t in control of the outcome. It was a time to trust God and get on with doing what I could, which was spending time with deeply impoverished people. I’ve practised a ‘do everything you can’ approach many times now. It doesn’t make life easy, but it has meant I keep moving forward. And that’s a good thing.