It is getting to be the holiday season. I have to admit, this is my favorite time of year. I love the weather, I love the mood, and I love the food. (Especially pumpkin pancakes and muffins, but that is a different post.) But, I am also a bit melancholy during all the celebrations. Remember in A Christmas Carol when the Ghost of Christmas Present pulls aside his gown to reveal the two horrifying children? That is me.
I have always identified with The Ghost of Christmas Present. If I have one true career goal in life, it is to be him. From the size to the dress to the mannerism, he is who I want to be. But just as he hides the two children symbolizing Want and Ignorance, I hold these concerns within my heart as I go through the season.
The one I am worrying about today, and many of us are worrying about due to the recent financial crisis, is Want. While I and my friends may cut back because money is a bit tight, there exists true poverty in this world. While I worry about paying over $3.00 for a gallon of gas, there are people with no shoes to walk. While you worry about not being able to go to Starbucks every morning, there are children who go days with no meals or clean water. Why I worry about my children’s college and field trips and Christmas presents, there are parent out there wonder which of their children to let die because they can’t feed or take care of them both.
Remember this from the interchange between Scrooge and Jacob Marley:
Ebenezer: But it was only that you were an honest man of business!
Jacob Marley: BUSINESS? Mankind was my business! Their common welfare was my business!
It is those thoughts that travel with me, and should travel with you, during this season and the rest of the year. We are deluding ourselves if we think there can ever be world peace or stability while there is still so much poverty in the world. And can, or should, any of us truly have inner peace and stability while no that those two children sheltered by the Ghost of Christmas Present have not been attended to?
