Where’s Scrooge Today?

Though my mother was eighty-nine years young, to my family, her passing last week seemed premature. Having heard horror stories of older people receiving less than stellar medical treatment, we can’t help asking questions about what steps the medical professionals followed during her decline. But all we get is what those in the business call, “damage control.” Before corporate medical care, the kindly country doctor grabbed his black bag containing all the medical tricks known to science, and traveled to his patients’ homes. Poor folks payed him in chickens and cucumbers, expecting--and getting--his best effort. When he guessed wrong and bad things happened, he mourned with the family. To him, they were family. The Hippocratic Oath once expressed the medical profession’s intent to do only good. But that was before “We, The People” began taking our constitutional guarantees for granted. That was before we began expecting more--always more, unaware that expectations seldom deliver what’s promised, their bitter fruit setting our lives on edge. That was before we discovered insurance companies and lawyers, mistaking them for money-trees. That was when avarice was still a sin, and not the crowning virtue it is today. That was when Dickens caricaturized the greedy capitalist in Ebenezer Scrooge. Today, we’re likely to find Scrooge working on an assembly line, driving his kids to soccer practice in his SUV tank, or lounging on his sofa, mesmerized by his home entertainment system. In fact, we’re likely to find today’s Scrooge looking back at us from a mirror. Of course, we could try to make ourselves feel better by continuing to blame the "thems" of big business and fat-cat politicians for today’s mess. But confession heals the soul. Let’s admit “We, The People” have multiplied Scrooge’s greed millions of times. With, or without the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, let’s repent of our societal avarice, one Scrooge at a time.