By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
It was a Christmas post on social media and a classic Christmas movie that started me thinking. They were a few weeks apart and it took a while for the two to meld in my mind into one idea. The post hit me as very meaningful and wise, and I stored it away into my mental files to be pulled from at appropriate times. I think it was as much as two or three weeks later when I decided, in a moment of rare and unprecedented quiet alone time, to watch A Christmas Carol. I noticed a detail in that movie that I have only seen probably twenty or thirty times, that I had never seen before. I made a note of it and decided to contemplate it more later as possibly subject matter for a blog in future. It wasn’t until I really gave it some time that an unexpected connection formed between the two seasonal ideas.
The social media post came from a dear friend who frequently makes posts that warm the heart or challenge the mind and more often than not do both. Her post began with a picture of her hand holding a cup of coffee. The lights of a Christmas tree sparkled blurred in the background. She spoke wisely and eloquently of challenges and distractions that are often faced this time. But then she gave the simple yet amazingly true statement that paired so nicely with that image she had presented from the beginning: You see what you focus on. I read it and it struck me with its clarity and honesty. It was one of those thoughts that was so amazingly obvious that I was a bit miffed with myself that I hadn’t thought of it. It is so true. If we focus on the negative or even the things that aren’t inherently unfavorable but that are less than ideal, those are the things that will be most prominently seen, like the coffee cup in the foreground of her picture. While all elements of a room may weigh equally both good and bad, the things that we decide to cast our most intent gaze upon, those are the things that we will see. We are viewfinders on cameras, and we choose our own prominent foreground and blurred background.
Now, what, I’m sure you’re wondering, on earth does this meaningful social media post have to do with Charles Dickens’ classic tale of charity, greed and keeping Christmas well? Well, I didn’t connect the dots either at first and if I’m honest, I have no idea what it was that drew the line between the two. But I was watching A Christmas Carol and was to the point where Ebenezer Scrooge was retiring to his chamber before his night of spirits and redemption. I noticed as he was preparing for bed that his bedroom door had not one, not two but three different locks on it that he made a very concerted to point to lock. He slid bolts and turned keys to be certain his chamber door was secure. Now, I had to have known these locks were there because it is a significant moment when Scrooge’s late partner’s ghost enters the room supernaturally unlocking them. Yet suddenly, I was struck by someone having so many locks on their bedroom.
What was Ebenezer keeping in? What was he keeping out? Was he guarding his possessions? Was he trying to keep people in general out? I suppose, knowing his character either of those was entirely possible. That is what he has become. In the tale we see in his past he was once a young happy man, with a love interest and plenty of ambition. But you see, his focus fell on his ambition for success, and it became all he was willing to see. And ambition is a admirable trait, but when you let it be the only thing that matters to you, rather than kindness, love and compassion what was a positive was allowed to become quite the opposite. Even good things, when inappropriately adored, become something else altogether.
When arranging the focal points of our lives, it’s so important what we put in the center of the room. There will be days when we will be tempted to feature certain items that probably aren’t really the best choice to be a centerpiece. Sometimes it will be something that is good and is a fully wholesome thing to be important, but not the most important. Then there will be those days that we’ll have a hard time seeing anything good and want to look with a disheartened stare at those overwhelming, or hard, or confusing, or frightening or really big things, letting them fill our view. Facebook and Scrooge made me think how important it is to be sure the furnishings of our minds and hearts have the pure, true and noble things at the forefront. Because anything else just junks up the décor.
Prose and Possibilities 