You are defined by what you do and what you don’t do.  Not doing some things are good: not breaking the law keeps you out of jail. Not eating poorly keeps you healthy.  Last week I asked you to challenge yourself and think about what you are not doing because not doing things also has its downside. Not giving your all produces a mediocre life. Not setting goals and focusing on priorities causes you to drift and squander your time away.  Not being open minded and not trying new things… makes you boring and old before your time.  Not doing things has its consequences so be just as mindful to what you don’t do as to what you do. Scrooge didn’t do a lot and it also helped define him. He didn’t care about others… He didn’t reach out beyond his own money-grubbing hole. He didn’t do much that makes us part of a society.

This Week’s Talk

We are close to closing out Scrooge’s time with the Ghost of Christmas present. Scrooge and the Spirit are watching his nephew, the nephew’s wife and all their friends having fun.  Scrooge continues hearing how others think less of him for his bah-humbug perspective on Christmas, hear the gathering gossip about his failure to gain any pleasure from his wealth and jest about his cold demeaner. As the party activities ramp up, Scrooge gets so involved that he forgets to be gloomy and cantankerous, and actually has fun. Scrooge is participating in the games and talking to the party goers as if they can actually see him. Scrooge is….having fun and seems… happy.   Say it’s not so!

There is nothing for him to be gained by the party. He speaks down about others having a good time because of free food and free drink yet there he is having fun. He has no circle of friends himself but he is cutting loose and being a part of the good time. How can it be that the person we know as Scrooge, the bah-humbug king; the man that refers to the weak and the poor as “surplus population”; the man that spent the night working while his business partner laid in the bed dying; can be doing those things we think he isn’t and having… fun?

This Week’s Assignment

I am not a therapist and don’t play one on TV. I don’t want to get too far off into the weeds, but maybe, just maybe, all of this crusty, unfeeling, uncaring, almost sociopathic personality is………. a cover.  Maybe it is a way to protect himself from being hurt, from being rejected, from making himself vulnerable?  Could it be that with all the fun going on, Scrooge dropped his guard down and let the real Scrooge come through? In the original book, Dickens writes of the time that Scrooge spends with the Ghost of Christmas present and how they were able to fit so much in by writing: “It was a long night, if it were only a night…” 

How are you like Scrooge and hiding parts of the real you? Maybe you really desire to be an artist but you are afraid of being rejected by people that don’t like your art? Maybe you want to be  an author and don’t think people will like what you write? Me? I really wanted to be a customer car painter and just never had the courage to take the plunge. When we are in  “our zone” time takes on a whole new dimension. What is it that you that causes time to drift away?  Cooking? Playing an instrument? Singing? Wood working? Painting? Sports? Maybe you have not done these in a long time? Maybe you enjoyed this a lot when you were a kid and let this piece of you drift away? What is it that you do and when you are doing it, time just seems to fly by?

See you next week…