At Your Elbow

“The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.” ~ A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

This is my favorite quote from Dicken’s story A Christmas Carol. Here, with the words “standing in the spirit at your elbow”, he inserts himself into our immediate moment. He is aware and confident enough in his writing to make himself palpably present to all his readers now and in the future. It’s totally brilliant!

Does it matter whether Dickens is actually at our elbow when he so masterfully made us consider the possibility? I picture him sitting at his writing desk, bearded chin cupped in his hand, hair tussled and unkempt, ink stains on his shirt cuffs as he penned those words. The magic lies not in his actual presence, but in the fact he understood a time would come when he wouldn’t be here and so he created his own moment with us that still reaches across time.

I don’t pretend to know whether a spiritual world exists or not. I’m not sure any of us can say one way or another. Truth is the present moment is all we really know for certain. My biggest fear is we might postpone living life to the fullest because we assume we have some future afterlife where, as one friend puts it, “we’ll all have new appliances”.

This is why I find cemeteries so intriguing. Many older gravestones leave messages to passersby as if to say “I existed. I was once as you. Pay attention to your life”. And as the memory of their life fades, and the memories of those who loved them fade as well, we are left with nothing but names and dates and our imaginations. It’s a chain of forgetting we’ll all eventually participate in someday.

I say all this to make a simple point. What we leave behind is nothing compared to what we can accomplish as we live. Make memories now. Love deeply. Live purposefully. Leave it all on the table. Live to the fullest extent of your being. Tell those you love how much they mean to you. Don’t worry about what others will say or think. Be your unique self. Do everything you can to make the world a better place. Have no regrets. Live like this is the only life you’ll ever have because we really don’t know what, if anything, comes next.