“What’s today my fine fellow?” said Scrooge. “Today?” replied the boy “Why Christmas Day”. The older I get, the more I understand Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ and why it has had such a hold on the English speaking world and its understanding of traditional holiday festivities for more than 180 years now. The book itself is not long, more of a long short story than even a novella and can easily be read in an evening. It gave to us all of those early Victorian trappings of Christmas that stay with us through the years – from the decorations, to the traditional feast menu, to innumerable strolling quartets of Dickens carolers popping up at a shopping center near you throughout the month of December. I doubt Charles, when he put pen to paper to write a ghost story about the holidays, had any idea what he was actually creating and the impact it would end up having on the world but most literary geniuses are writing to meet the needs of the moment and it’s only in retrospect that we completely understand their insights into the human condition which lift certain works above the mundane.
I played Scrooge on stage a decade ago. It’s one of those parts you don’t turn down if you’re an actor of a certain age. I’d love to tackle him again with another decade of living and life crises under my belt. I think I understand him better now. He’s not sinister, he’s not evil. LIfe just pushes him in certain ways which get his priorities out of joint and, at the end, he’s not a different person than he was; the visits of the spirits simply lead him to recalibrate. The results of loss and mistaken choices have embittered him over time and the making of money has become a maladaptive coping mechanism for dealing with the world. And one of the genius moves of Dickens is his not completely explaining Scrooge’s past. Did his business acumen destroy Fezziwig? What sort of business was Scrooge actually in? We know some of the superficial reasons why Belle breaks her engagement to him but what more was going on?
The ghosts, all four of them (yes four – Marley counts) each give him a different means of better understanding himself through the prisms of past, present, and future. What are ghosts? They exist in every human culture and folk tradition so they seem to be something that are created by human experience, no matter who we may happen to be. I know I am haunted by ghosts. They aren’t physical spectral manifestations but they certainly exist in my psyche, created by my thoughts, guilts, and regrets. I guess they’re a side effect of our prodigious brains and memories. There will always be roads not taken, bad decisions, old injuries to ourselves or to others and ghosts are a handy anthropomorphic shorthand way of dealing with all of that in narrative form.
Over the years, my ghosts have taught me a lot. They’ve helped me reevaluate my past, make different decisions in my present, and have hopefully allowed my future to unfold in ways that might not have been possible a few years before. They’re companions. Sometimes, late at night, they can make me uncomfortable as I ruminate over things that once happened and which are over and done with. But is that their doing, or is it me and how I am feeling and reacting to something in the present and processing it by seeing it through the lens of the past.
I’m old enough now that my life’s companions are starting to slip away and leave the party one by one. Some of them may join the chorus of ghosts in my head as they still have something to say or to teach me. I suppose one of the marks of true maturity is being able to homestly face them all and let them know that I have no regrets regarding where my life is currently headed. (Of course, I’m not absolutely sure where this is at the moment but does any of us really know)? I guess I just need to keep moving forward with enough momentum to keep their rumblings at a dull roar.
As I’m wise enough to be aware of my ghosts, I don’t feel a particular need to try and hold my life, or the lives of others in any sort of stasis. Those at the highest level of government don’t seem to have learned this lesson. The president continues to engage in puerile and awfully repetitive rantings, when not engaged in trying to engrave his name or image on whatever happens to be at hand. ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works ye mighty and despair’. wrote Percy Shelley and yet the lone and level sands stretch away from a shattered visage. I see in him and in the other politicians of his generation a primal need to try and stop time while they try to secure their legacies and reorder the world to their liking. But that’s not how any of this actually works. We live on by allowing the succeeding generations to build on our legacies not by imposing things upon them. I’m teaching the young physicians who are going to take over my clinical practice how to think and problem solve, but not the exact ways in which I have done things. Those are mine and worked for me – they’ll have to come up with what works for them and a new generation.
Will Trump and his ilk reorder their thoughts after spectral visitations? Unlikely. Their public actions suggest that they are unwilling to listen to the ghosts already speaking to them . I can hope that eventually their hearts and minds will let in concepts such as empathy and equity but I’m not holding my breath. We can weigh our options as voters and decide who listens to the voices of the past and uses them to improve the future and give them our votes rather than voting based on an R or a D after the name but that will require engaging in the political process rather than treating it as a spectator sport. In the meantime, I’ve had my Chinese food so it’s time for a movie. May you and yours have a merry Christmastime (remember it lasts for twelve days – until Janurary 6th) and, in the immortal words of Tiny Tim. God Bless Us, Every One.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 