PEOPLE MAKER
Charles Dicken's probably can be readily credited, I'd say, with having created more characters than any other literary people-maker.
So many of them are loveable characters and we like to think we have some of the qualities they show, but there are some first-class villians among them, too.
Chief among them, to many people, has old Ebenezer Scrooge, but he reforms completely in "A Christmas Carol" and rejoins the human race just in time. Now, take another of Dicken's nasties - Uziah Heep, and Fawkes was it not in the "Oliver Twist" story? They, and some others, start nasty and stay nasty for the duration of the story and a few pages longer.
We like to think we have some of the finer qualities of Charles Dickens' most loveable characters in our way of living, compassion, understanding, respect for the rights of others, as well as a firm dedication to the ideals of hard work and absolute confidence in the ideals orf astrict work ethic and a dedeication to work with definite aims in mind for a future brighter and more satisfying for ourselves and those we love
. Few of us would ever think of admitting that we, from time,to time, might also show some of the less admirable traits which Dickens caused his Heeps, Scrooges and other depicable characters to perform. "That's fiction," we say as an excuse, and life is real. It is, however, true that these lesser qualities can, and do, creep into, our lives without our being aware of it happening. Now, at the beginning of a New Year is the traditional time to resolve to eliminate quesitonable elements from our lives, and Christmas is a time for ethical purification which should make us
want to do better in the future The timing is perfect.
Think about it. If there is even a slight hint of "envy" in your thinking - deal with it now. Drive it out and along with it any taints of vainness, distrust, hatred or other such clouds shadowing your life and preventing the sunlight of happiness from getting to you in full measure.
Hell, it has been said, is the repeated remembence of all of the little things we have done about which we have any regrets. Why run the heat up higher? Certainly we can see evidences of that in Dickens' people and we can pick out ones we admire and try to emulate the general restraints they used to void the very same hazards we are still contending with today.
Right now...on this special day.. TinyTim's words fit our mood - a very merry Christmas to all!
A.L.M. December 25, 2004 [c402wds]
