I’ve read Charles Dickens’s book, A Christmas Carol every year since I was a bit older than Tiny Tim. For those of you who haven’t read the book or seen one of the many play or film versions of it, that’s under ten years old.
I suppose that what first attracted me to the story was ghosts (there are four major ghosts with plenty of minor spirits) but over the years it’s meaning has changed and become more personal and profound..
For example, my early ”lesson learned” was not be miserly (like Scrooge when we first meet him) and to give to others who have less in gratitude for what I have been given. In recent years the meaning has become one of transformation, hope and renewal regardless of age or circumstances.
Dickens first spirit (his former business partner) arrives on Christmas Eve bound with chains, the “links I forged in life”. He offers Scrooge an opportunity to avoid his fate by being visited by three spirts. Scrooge reluctantly agrees and meets, in succession, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. For those of us familiar with assessment tools, this was total immersion!
At the end of the visits Scrooge is a changed person. He faces the shadows of his past, his losses, and avoids the fate that was inevitable unless he changed the way he behaved with his family, employee, and his colleagues.
We’ll likely all been visited by nasty financial and career apparitions in 2008 and it can be difficult to see the opportunity for renewal when we’re haunted by our choices. We can all use our holiday ”lessons learned’ to achieve lasting change that benefits ourselves and our world. . In effect, we become our own “sustainable venture”. That’s my holiday wish for all of us!