We all know the story of Scrooge, the clutching old skinflint miser, whose icy heart delivered dread and holiday misery to all in his path.
And how, one Christmas Eve, three ghosts, nay, four ghosts (don't forget ole Marley), paid him a visit to warn him he would end up dragging his very own chains of karma around for all eternity, if he did not alter his ways.
By some miracle, he got the message and broke with his chains of fear to become a happier creature, spreading joy and keeping Christmas as no one ever had.
Why do we love this story?
I think it's because we all hope such a transformation is possible: not for others, though that would be great, too, but for ourselves.
Why? Because we are ALL dragging around chains of our own, humbugging our way through life, wishing our Past had been different, that our Present was perfect, and that the Future wasn't so dire.
And you ARE dragging your Past chains around, aren't you? Be honest.
I do it.
But do we have to? Are these chains real?
Nope. Not any more real than Scrooge's. And we can drop them, just like he did.
Over this Holiday season, for the next two weeks, I'm gonna reveal the real message within Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and HOW you, and I, can shed those chains and live a life of perpetual happiness.
Or at least, I'm gonna show you how I'm working on it. Maybe we can journey through the Past, the Present, and the Future, together?
Let's Fuck On and do that!
STAVE ONE: STORING PAST TRAUMA
Do your past experiences come up to haunt you in the present? Ever?
They sure do for me. Sometimes they overwhelm the crap outta me, if I'm being honest.
Not only do they seem to dominate my thoughts in the present, but then I often project them into my possible future. All of this shit comes together in a perfect storm of
Add this to my already overactive brain, a product of (most likely) undiagnosed ADHD, and you can see where I'm goin' with this.
It's a disaster.
I've been through quite a few disasters in my life: most ot them self-inflicted. Divorces, breakups, failed business ideas, coming up short of my own expectations, not to mention those of others.
And now it's the end of the year, again, and time to reflect upon what I've accomplished, or not, this year. I'm sure you're there, too.
My year wasn't that great.
i thought it was headed in a better direction, until I wiped out on my scooter one night in June.
After leaving half my skin on the highway, there was an ambulance ride, a night in the ER, a shattered shoulder, surgery and months of recovery, instead of finding a job or advancing my business ideas.
Hopefully yours wasn't as disastrous.
Now the Holidays are upon us.
Humbug. That's usually how I approach them, through the lens of my inner Scrooge.
A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite stories of all time. In fact, I'm somewhat of an expert on the text. Not so much all of Dickens's other stories, but when it comes to Scrooge, I know the story frontwards and backwards.
And I think ole Scrooge has a few lessons for us, as he has for over 180 years.
Scrooge was overcome with Fear. It was really his ONLY PROBLEM, I'm gonna argue.
Why? Because it IS the ONLY PROBLEM humanity has. (I wrote an entire book on Fear). I've also written a short book on the origins of A Christmas Carol, but that's for later.
Scrooge and His Past
Ole Ebeneezer suffered as a child, which is easy to see in the text, though sometimes only obliquely.
We know that he was sent off to a bording school, something not really done in America, but which is still a thing in England, though mostly for the upper crust of society these days.
Back then, middle class families often sent their sons off to be whipped into shape, quite literally, until they could become useful members of society.
We see Scrooge, abandoned at school during the Holidays, when all of his friends were home celebrating with family.
Why was this? We aren't told, but we get hints that his father was a bit of an asshole. His sister, Fan, gives us the clue:
"Father is much kinder than he used to be…one dear night…I was not afraid to ask hi once more if you might come home…"
Why would she be 'afraid' to ask her father to let Ebenezer come home for the Holidays? Because her father was a dick. There's no other explanation.
So we know he had a hard childhood. He felt very little love, except for that of his sister.
Where was his mother?
It is implied, simply through her absence (think "The incident of the dog in the night" from Sherlock Holmes) that she was already deceased.
This was an all to common occurance in Victorian England, and the rest of the world in the 19th Century. Many mothers died giving birth, as medical science was in its infancy.
So he had no mother. We don't know if Fan's mother was the same as her brother's, but we will assume so. The father may have taken out his grief upon the eldest child. He probably also wanted to 'harden' him up for the 'real world.'
Thanks Toxic Masculinity…
Scrooge then matured and was sent to apprentice with ole Fezziwig. He seemed to enjoy his time there and have fond memories. It is likely that he met his future fiance, Belle, while working there, thought he book doesn't tell us that.
Many movie versions suggest she was one of Fezziwig's daughters, but that seems unlikely, as we know she was 'dowerless,' meaning her father couldn't afford a dowry for her marriage. Fezziwig seemed pretty wealthy.
This period could have been Scrooge's redemption, but it didn't work out that way.
The Breakup: Fears of Loss and Scarcity
All we really know about Belle is that Scrooge once loved her and they were engaged to be married. But somewhere along the line, between working for Fez and during his venture into business with Marley, he lost his way and what happiness he had found.
The hardness he learned as a youth returned.
Belle brings this into sharp focus when she breaks off the engagement:
"You fear the world too much…All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you."
And here we see that Fear is at the root. He fears the world.
What does that mean?
Most scholars, and readers, focus on the word 'Gain' here, as the root of Scrooge's problems. In other words, his Greed is why he has lost his way. But greed is a symptom of Fear.
It's clear from the text that Belle understands the difference of root and branch: Fear and Greed. That's why she points out his Fear of the world, which then corrupts his good side, leaving him with only Greed.
What are Scrooge's Fears?
Mainly, the Fears of Scarcity and Loss. He is obsessed with making money.
Why?
Because he is constantly afraid of not having enough, of slipping back into poverty. It's clear from the school he attended and what little we know of his father, that his father had the same fears.
He knew his son needed an education to escape the constant struggle to make a living in a world with no safety nets. But he could not afford to send him to a posh school.
Scrooge is also afraid of Loss.
He's lost his mother. He also lost his sister Fan. We don't know if she died giving birth to his nephew, Fred, or sometime after, but she's gone, and he loved her.
We can also assume his father is also dead at this point, though, whether he was or not, he was 'dead to Scrooge.' They were clearly not close.
Now, in this cold scene, he loses his fiance, his only romantic love.
Have you ever been through a breakup?
Who hasn't?
I won't even go into all of mine, lol. It's pitiful.
I'll just say, breakups fuckin' suck, whether you're the one walkin' away, or the one pushed out the door. I've been both.
They have been likened to a death in the family. I would say they are worse, because most family members don't choose to die. When someone breaks up with you, it goes straight to the chest and tends to lodge there, usually forever.
That's what happened to Scrooge: death and breakup. And it turned him against the world. It closed his heart to all emotions, except bitterness, anger, and apathy.
This is what happens to us all, to some degree, when faced with such loss. Poverty or Scarcity, if combined with Loss, make for a hell of a psycho soup.
Scrooge resisted those moments in his life. We do too. And that is why they never leave us.
Any moment in reality we Resist, is locked within our MInd and Heart, forever, or until we do something to release them.
The late, great psychoanalyst, Carl Jung once said, correctly:
"What you resist not only persists, it will grow in size."
And they will come back, over and over and over again, screwing our life up, till the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come points down at our headstone.
But it doesn't have to be that way. I don't care what anyone says; we DO NOT have to store that shit and hang onto it.
Why would we? We do it. All of us do it.
We do it because our Mind wants to protect us against possible Future scenarios. It's how our minds work, thanks to millennia of training.
How Do We NOT Store Past Trauma?
The answer is so simple you're not gonna believe it.
And quite frankly, I'm still workin' on this, so I'm no master, but in the last year and a half, I've been reading and listening to the work of Michael Singer.
I've been on a spiritual path for decades, but no one has ever laid it out as simply as Singer does.
Here's how you do it:
Let go.
Yeah, that's really it.
"Fuck you, Steve," you say. "If it were that simple, everyone would do it."
I say it's 'simple', but that doesn't mean it's EASY!
I would argue the simplest things are precisely the things we find the hardest to do, or even SEE to do. The answers to the most difficult questions are usually simple.
It's very difficult and takes a lot of practice, but you CAN let go of your past fears, pain, and mental anguish.
The reason we store this shit in the first place is because we're attempting to Fix the External World, so that we can be Okay, INTERNALLY!
But that's impossible. The world, the Universe, IS WHAT IT IS.
Can we influence a tiny portion of it?
Sure, but we are usually trying, like ole Scrooge, to Control Everything!
That's a heavy weight, and heavier still because it AIN'T EVER GOONNA HAPPEN?!
The only things we can fix, are INSIDE!
We can rewire our brains to let go of what is, of our expectations and preferences, and be content, even happy, (dare I say that?), with the world, AS IT IS.
Then, and only then, can we actually HELP make our little corner of the world not so sucky, like Scrooge did at the end of the story.
We're gonna talk about the technique to Let Go, more next week.
For this week, just do this:
- Notice when you're resisting the World/Reality. Take the weather, for example. How does it affect your mood? What if it's raining? Sunny? Cold? Hot? Why does it matter? What about Traffic? Ooooo, there's a good one to work on. Can you just let that other driver's actions GO? Or does your mind run away from you?
- Think to yourself, "Wow, why should the weather matter? I can't control it. That's weird", (because it is weird). Same thing with the Traffic Jam. "Wow, I get to sit here and check out that tree over there."
- Check out my books! The End of Fear Itself, and A Ghost of an Idea (on the origins of A Christmas Carol)
- NEED HELP? Either with this technique, or maybe you're a creator who wants to write a book but doesn't know how to start, or you're stuck getting your creative project going and need advice? Book a One on One with Me! We'll spend an hour on a video chat and get you going! I promise.
FUCK ON! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Steve