Life lessons and fine prose

My mother gave me a gift card to a Barnes and Noble. Dead set on getting a CD, we inadvertently walked into a Barnes and Noble that did not carry CDs! I ended up with “A Christmas Carol”. What a wonderful book. Full of life lessons and fine prose, I marked some of the most striking quotes of Dickens’ writing and here provide thoughts.

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it comes round--- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

[Touches on loving thy neighbor, rich and poor; snootiness not allowed.]

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—o, woe is me!--- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness!”

[Deliver a message that if you do not share your spirit, you’ll be forced to suffer watching what you could have shared but didn’t. Makes one think--- ]

[Scrooge tells the Ghost of Jacob Marley he was “a good man of business”.]

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

[Touches on how life, the purpose of our life--- is, or should be, much greater than just our business, trade or job. Feels like Mr. Marley is in post mortem regret, hence the message to Ebenezer!]

“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”

[Hmmm, what could I be missing?]

[Ghost of Christmas past shows Ebenezer a former lover. She said to him, ]
“… Another idol has displaced me.”
“What idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.
“A golden one.”

[Lest we worship money. Thou shalt not! :)]

[The ghost of Christmas present has a torch.]

“And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly.”

[Baptism?]

“He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

[Lest we forget.]

“their shoes were not water-proof”

[Speaking of a poor family, this stuck me, as I spent so much time searching for good water-proof shoes!]

“… they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, an old man got quite blithe and loud, and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.”

[so sad… and elderly man, catching the musical spirit of the moment, perhaps feeling young again—a feeling so fleeting.]

“…smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.”

[The flip side of old, there is an upside to it after all.]

“Oh cold, cold rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!”

[Now with the ghost of Christmas future (Shadow), Ebenezer views a dead body, and hears these words in his head; his thoughts, his wishes for the body, that it glows in the glory of its great past. Unknown to Ebenezer, he wished it upon himself.]

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if preserved in, they must lead,” said Scrooge. “But if the course be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”

[Ebenezer speaks to the ghost of Christmas future, desperately hoping he can change his course.]

“Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!”

[Wish granted.]