Business

A week ago I went to see “A Musical Christmas Carol” with my family. Basically, it’s Dickens’ famous play with a bunch of Christmas carols. It was awesome. It was festive. And when it ended with Tiny Tim’s “God bless us every one!” I had shed more than one tear.

I’ve read, watched, and heard this story at least a dozen times over the course of my life. Still, this time I was struck by the scene in which the ghost of Marley tells Scrooge the spirits will come to visit him. Attempting to make sense of Marley’s plea that Scrooge change his ways so that he doesn’t end up like Marley, Scrooge, completely bewildered about why Marley’s life was inadequate, says, “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob.”

And this is Marley’s response: “Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

I don’t know how anyone can read/hear this without being convicted. “Mankind was my business.” Granted, I also know the Victorian perfectionist movement that spawned this story was not as altruistic or even as Christian as many people want to believe. Still, every time I hear these words I am reminded that, as usual, I have gotten too self-absorbed and lost sight of those things that are truly important: people.

Loving and caring for people is hard work when you’re in grad school. Really hard. I admit I feel torn between my need to do my work—work that will get me the career I want, helping people in a way I feel called to help, and for which I moved my husband and myself to another state and am paying money that will be wasted if I don’t invest myself in learning the information I want and need to learn—and my need and calling to care for and about the people in my life right now. I want to live a life in which my ‘business’ includes my career and my family, friends, and community. Sometimes I feel like grad school is asking me to suspend this life. Yet I also feel like I should be in school. I don’t have any answers. I guess life’s business is just sort of messy sometimes.