Get Your Scrooge On.
Because the best presents can't be wrapped...
Ebeneezar Scrooge is usually identified more with “Bah, humbug,” than the redemptive end of the story where he promises the Ghost of Christmas Future, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” I connect more with this line from Dicken’s “Christmas Carol” because like many people I reflect back on past events about which I’m not particularly proud. Besides how many times have you breathed in the good will of the season and thought, “I wish people were like this year round.”
In my working with people as a tutor, mentor, adviser, and sensei, I’ve had one goal: To help facilitate the greatness in others. I want people to be as smart and as wealthy as they can be. Why? We’re only here for a very short time. It seems a waste to fill that time with less than what would truly fulfill your life. If nothing else, this past year has reminded us that the world is too dangerous a place to be full of a lot of ignorant, impoverished people; and not just ignorant and impoverished of mind and wallet but of spirit too. If you’re self-centered you should still agree with me if for no other reason that it will make the world a better place for you to live in.
If you want to change the world, you change yourself. Reflecting on Scrooge’s promise I started the “Scrooge Challenge” for myself in 2017 with the same simple goal; to honor Christmas all the year by fulfilling my time by giving to someone else on or about the 25th of each month.
If you take on the Scrooge Challenge I would warn you of a couple of things not in Dicken’s story that would most surely have shown up if he’d written a sequel. First giving a real gift, not a substitute for one, is a lot harder than it sounds. You’re not just using a thing which is a substitute for a gift. You’re giving the most precious thing in the world---time. You’re giving the gift of yourself to help another have a more fulfilling life. Being someone’s Scrooge can be frustrating at times. You’ll find as I did that most of what we have to offer people either doesn’t fit their need or isn’t wanted for one reason or another. However it’s not their acceptance of your offer that’s important. The gift occurs when they recognize that you offered something of yourself, that precious commodity of time, that is important. The offer of yourself, reminds people that they’re not alone, even if the who you have to offer them isn’t timely for them.
The second thing to be warned about if you decide to be a Scrooge for others, is the gift may choose you. Don’t be so goal oriented to perform in a certain way that you’re blind to everyday opportunity. I don’t want to get into details because you need to find a way to get in touch with your own Scrooge, but let me give you a few examples to help you be creative. I spent 45 minutes one day with a young man obviously struggling with his 5th day of sobriety. He desperately wanted someone to listen and I did. If that 90 minutes helped him through another day it was the best investment I made for the entire year. Showing someone how to write better, present themselves through a resume, or connect them with someone who can help them on their career path. Send that book that just might make a difference in the direction of a person’s life then call them up and talk to them about it. Devote more time to listening to the loved ones’ closest to you. Share your experience and knowledge with an interested young person. (Yes, Virginia, they do exist.) You never know when your difference makes the difference. I meant to pay for a stranger’s lunch as a random act. She was the only other person in the shop and she broke down crying. “It’s just what I needed,” she said as she went on to tell me about her struggle with dealing with her husband’s dementia in the midst of her own health problems.
The right words work wonders, but the right listening can work miracles. Words are metaphors of condensed and shared experiences. We live in an age of minds that lack resiliency, and have been repeated violated by people and nameless systems, which tell people they are helpless victims. Use your words and listening to mend a mind, to help that person enable their abilities. People are too often heard and not listened to. “I hear you” doesn’t say a lot. Even a duck hears. So LISTEN to a person; attend to what they are saying. Abide with someone for a while maybe the greatest gift you can give them, especially when you don’t know them.
When you’re someone else’s Scrooge you are exactly the gift you need to be. It’s proven to be an acid test of commitment and a blessing as much to myself as to the recipients.
In the coming year, I want you to fulfill your life by living each moment well, so that your destiny will be revealed to you. In cultivating the greatness in others you’ll find a deep vein of it within yourself. Get your Scrooge on; the world will be a better place. As Tiny Tim said, “God bless us, every one!”