Bidness
Uncle Scrooge goes duckwyld with a headfirst dive into his money bin. They should call it a money pit.
Last weekend, my wife’s folks took us to a fancy musical production of my favorite Christmas play, A Christmas Carol. The play’s main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, hits so hard I call it Scrooge. Scrooge played at the fanciest theater in town, the Guthrie, and I loved the show. The elaborate sets transported me to Victorian-era London, and a double-decker circular stage on swivel swapped them out in creative ways; the special effects were magical, including the Ghost of Christmas Past floating onto the scene from the heavens on a wire, and a 10-foot-tall Ghost of Christmas Future that was a person inside a giant scary post-apocalyptic robot suit (that sounds cheesy but it wasn’t, it was supercool); the supporting actors had some presence and some pipes, especially the young boy who played Lil ‘nezer; and the actor who played Scrooge was stuntin’ all over the stage and owned the role. I laughed, I cried, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
The only rough part was about a quarter through when it hit me that Scrooge was a Dark Night of the Soul story. This caused me to experience anxiety, as I sometimes have flashbacks where I relive painful moments from my own Dark Night that cause me to experience big emotions.
While the show triggered some painful flashbacks and attendant big emotions, I used some breathing techniques I wrote about in my second book, Good Vibes, to regulate them. Once I was confident that I wouldn’t blow up the playhouse spot and start crying uncontrollably in the fetal position, which I sometimes do when I’m experiencing flashbacks, I settled in and went along for the ride. With an awareness that my man Scrooge was going through it like me, the show hit harder than ever.
The part that hit the hardest was when Scrooge was gassing up the ghost version of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and told him how good the alive version of Marley was at business and making money. Ghost Marley, in spectral Allen Iverson “practice” voice or Jim Mora “playoff” voice, was like, “Business?! Business?! My business should have been helping my fellow humans and advancing the greater good instead of being about making money for myself!”
Getting dunked on by the ghost of Jacob Marley was only the beginning of Scrooge’s Dark Night. He went on to do all kinds of what modern mental health practitioners might call intense shadow work over three frightening nights while his deepest fears and insecurities played out in supernatural ways. Scrooge felt himself going insane and losing his mind, yet emerged from his Dark Night with a kindler, gentler heart and an impulse to look out for the greater good.
There’s nothing new under the sun. Humans have been going through Dark Nights of the Soul since we gained consciousness and asked ourselves, “Who am I?”
Where we always land is that we’re part of a collective consciousness that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
Scrooge and I were all about making paper, being right, and protecting ourselves and our money. Look where that got us: stuck like chuck and hiding under the bed with no drawers on.
When we humans lose sight of what’s really important—helping others—we malfunction. When we really lose sight of what’s what, things tend to go how it went for Scrooge and me.
Life’s about spreading love and making connections, not business and making money.
The word itself tells you everything you need to know: busy ness. The ca$h money dancing part of life is busy work. The most important stuff is spiritual, including community, connection, fellowship, and friendship.
Everyone’s gotta chop the wood and carry the water, so we should have our cash money dance moves on point. But when cash money dancing becomes the point, we lose the point.
As an old friend likes to say, “I don’t live to work, I work to live.”
When we live to work and cash money dance, we end up like Scrooge: mean, scared, disillusioned, and alone.
God has a great sense of humor and made us forget that we’re all the same. Scrooge figured out that the joke’s on us when we put ourselves first and become attached to any form, which is forever in flux and will someday turn to dust, just like you and me.
Scrooge’s nephew Fred knew we only have a short time here on this abundant Earth, and that we’re all gonna turn to dust in a cosmic blink of an eye. That’s why he implored his uncle to stop putting money first and being greedy, and to instead be about putting love first and focusing on stuff like sharing and building community. As Fred put it, “Drink and be merry.”
Scrooge ended up rockin with Fred, and the part at the end of the play where they hugged it out brought me so much joy it made me cry. I rock hard with Fred, too, as I’m all about loving, sharing, and merriment. Only I don’t drink. But I do smoke weed like Nate Dogg, bless his regulating soul.
