Here is a little Dickens for you on the eve of the eve.
Dickens isn’t scolding regret here, just cutting it off at the knees. He is saying regret is cheap if it doesn’t turn into motion. You can sit with sorrow, replay the tape, catalog the missed chances, but none of that redeems the time itself. The ledger doesn’t rebalance just because you feel bad about it.
That is why A Christmas Carol ages so well. Scrooge isn’t saved by remorse, but by action. The ghosts don’t ask him to feel worse, they force him to see clearly.
Past, present, future.
No sentimentality, no soft landings... Just truth. Once he sees that the clock is still running. He realizes he must start moving.
Every year or so I read this classic story just before Christmas. Every year a different man is turning the pages that contain the same words. One year it is about money. Another year it’s about time. Another year it is about people I thought would always be there. Dickens wrote a short book that somehow keeps pace with my dazed life.
Today's quote belongs on the Chalkboard because it doesn’t let anyone hide behind “if only.” It says: the only amends available are the ones made today. Not yesterday or maybe tomorrow. Not in thought, nor in regret... In behavior and in action.
That is the hard truth. It is an old truth. The kind that has always been right there.
Later this morning, when the sun shows up right on schedule, it won’t care how many times I have read Dickens. It will ask the same question it always does:
What are you going to do with the time that’s still yours?
