Reflecting upon my life for this season, it is very much filled with questions and waiting. All the “when” and “where” questions elude answers and I find myself thinking about what I want life to be about. I want laughter, friends, beaches, family, photography, music, food, books, cultures and love. I want other things too: meaning, faith, grace, patience, joy….a legacy to leave behind. The questions I have usually are if the job or location I choose will limit these pursuits in some way. I’ll be too tired for music. Not enough time for books. Or I’ll have plenty of time, but no money to visit distant friends and foreign countries. Like a movie, I want to be the character who gets to see the ending of multiple paths in life, and based on that end result, I want to choose now what I will do. I want time to see where my misplaced desires will take me and still have time to correct the mistakes.
For me it’s a fear of ending up like Ebenezer Scrooge, who started off care-free and determined. He decided he could not marry until he was established financially. At the end of life, alone and miserly, the ghost of Christmas past shows him his ex-fiancé and love he lost in pursuit of “establishment.” She says to him:
'Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.'
'I was a boy,' he [Ebenezer] said impatiently.
'Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,' she returned. 'I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.'
'Have I ever sought release.'
'In words. No. Never.'
'In what, then.'
'In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,' said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him;' tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now. Ah, no.'
Ah, no. I hear the sad inflection in her voice. And Scrooge, as he stands there regretting his loss, realizes that it’s too late. The choice has been made. He didn’t even realize that he was succumbing to poverty of spirit in his quest for riches. I suppose that conversation, that loss of his fiancé, could have been the wakeup call that his life was headed down a path of loneliness and sorrow. He didn’t need to wait fifty years until the ghost reminded him of his mistakes. However, he was blindsided in his pursuit. In this, I fear we seek things that will not satisfy. On the other hand, our modern poet Taylor Swift would paint a picture of what could happen if we ignore the reality of life and money in the naive expectation that without trying everything will turn out perfectly:
Flash forward and we’re taking on the world together
And there’s a drawer of my things at your place
You learn my secrets and figure out why I’m guarded
You say we’ll never make my parent’s mistakes.
But we’ve got bills to pay
We’ve got nothing figured out
There’s a balance in this somewhere. Maybe in twenty years I’ll have the clarity of Scrooge to answer more of my own questions.
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