Are you getting Scrooged?

 GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE

These are the words of Tiny Tim in the Dickens classics “A Christmas Carol.”  You may know  it by another name such as Scrooge or Scrooged (an excellent  Bill Murray version).  The story. In a nutshell tells the tale of a cheap skated worldly business person  driven by profit and the thought that efficiency is the only path to satisfaction and a valuable life.  Now the main character Mr. Scrooge gets visited by three spirits  during Christmas night and undergoes a great transformation becoming the embodiment of a repentant Christmas enthusiast.  It’s a short book and a great movie in most of it’s versions.  

For the “peace and joy” perspective it seems we may be tempted  to think the Dickens  tale is a bit far fetched (by the way is something  very  obvious “near-fetched?). Anyway from the beginning. To the end Scrooge doesn’t change physically.  He doesn’t

T loose or gain money.  He doesn’t move to a tropical island.  He doesn’t have plastic surgery and become  a stud muffin.... so what is this transformation?  It’s a sudden change in attitude.  So the question  becomes... “what attitude or conception can in our lives can we “pull aScrooge” on?  You see Scrooge just changed the meaning of things and reframed his experiences so that the lessons he learned provided new insights.  He let some experiences from his past touch his heart in a different way and he chose to accept that there may be multiple interpretations to almost any situation.  He also chose to make “mankind his business.”  How would things. Change if we all dedicated ourselves to  changing one aspect of life and  for even a day or three made mankind our business?    I’m wondering what might happen. If during the holiday season major retailers and discount stores provided us with 20% percent off....but instead of giving each shopper the 20% only gave each 15% and gave 5% to a local non-profit or humanitarian cause.  Maybe a business like Verizon could  take their savings and pass them along to rural schools or in-home care providers who need to stay in touch with medical  folks or community supports like family members.  What if Wal-mart was forced by law to give 5% to support  a group of small businesses in their community or to pay for free community education or physical fitness facilities, walking trails, or public news  and information services?  You know...what if we demanded that “mankind was our business” every year between Thanksgiving and  Christmas?  As a culture would we have a transformative experience?  

Well that’s just a thought... and thank you Mr. Dickens for suggesting it... I hope that some 177 years later a few people seeking peace and joy understand that  we cannot often change  what happens. And yet we can change our stance, our  meaning for the experiences, and thus change our response.  We can fully embrace. Our response-Ability so to speak and we can do so instantly even though we sometimes  hold onto  attitudes and assumptions for a long time.  We can flip the switch and change the world especially for ourselves and maybe millions of “tiny Tims”

Just give it some thought and  if you are visited by spirits either in the day or in the night...pay attention —new possibilities are  possible and “it can happen for you”.