Mr. Magoo as Inspiration

The Holiday's in the US are supposed to be joyous and happy times for millions of Americans. Family members and friends gather together, often only during that one time of year, to share their love, their memories, and rekindle and nurture old relationships.

Many people even go so far as to spend hours and hours completely redecorating their homes with lights, music, symbols of their faith and what the time of year is meant to symbolize. Oftentimes, rituals such as exchanging gifts, lighting candles, and festive family meals with ample libations are served to symbolize how people feel about each other.

But there are millions of people in the world who dread the holidays, and not because of the superficial, somewhat selfish inconveniences of "endless" lines at store registers, clogged traffic at the malls and stores, or because the "true" meaning of the season has been lost to commercialism.

I grew up in a large family, with a brother, two sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and always a lot of friends.I'm fortunate in that, although most of my family is gone, I have still have two kind, loving, and, yes, kind of goofy sisters who live in Florida and we have been spending the last few holiday seasons together enjoying each other's company and rekindling our love for each other.

Of course, many aren't nearly as lucky. They feel lonely, like failures, as though life has abandoned or failed them in some way, or are otherwise suffering in isolation and hopeless. (And I'm not talking about the unfortunate elderly, ill, or desperately poor, here either. That's a topic for another post.)


Isolation and hopelessness are the worst. They're like a poison in your head for which there is often times no immediate anti-venom. No matter how hard you try to "force it down" or ignore it, drink, drug or sex it away, it can eat at you every moment of your waking day. You can be in a room full of people or at a holiday party and being eaten alive by it.

And I know because I have tried all of those things at one time or another in 55 years of life.

This has not been one of the best years of my life because in January I lost my high paying job due to the struggling economy, and was still kind of bitter over my last divorce and not being married or being able to spend Christmas morning with a wife and my two stepsons.

But, again, through some (mostly) undeserved good fortune, I'd been in the financial services industry for over 32 years and, to paraphrase Garret Morris from the ORIGINAL "Saturday Night Live", Insurance had been berry, berry good to me. So I was able to retire.

And when you retire at 55, with very or little advanced expectation of doing so, and you have no wife or children, it leaves you a LOT of time alone that was previously filled with "family obligations".

And alone is NOT good. It leaves a lot of time for that committee of twelve in my head to chatter negative thoughts at me.

So, I've been trying to reinvent myself, trying out the latest and greatest money making schemes with very minimal immediate gratification (and gratification just HAS to be immediate to me!) and have been feeling pretty low this season, feeling sorry for myself, and moving toward that old hopeless feeling. Not quite at hopeless, just moving closer and closer to the edge every day.

On Christmas eve, in an attempt to recapture some of the happier times of my youth, I rented a copy of one of the greatest film versions of  Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" ever produced.

You guessed it -- "Mr. Magoo's A Christmas Carol'".

And not the cut up for extra commercials to 52 minutes for network TV versions either. The full length version, presented as it was originally aired in 1962, when I was just 5 years old. I hadn't seen it in at least 30 years, but I've always loved it!!

Despite the early animation, it had the added advantage of staying very true to Dicken's original text, and BECAUSE of the early somewhat primitive animation, it was entertainingly "over the top", meaning less than subtle like the classic film versions most mature adults would invest time watching this time of year.


Magoo's Scrooge is classic from beginning to end, and again, because it was a bit "over the top", it really hit me over the head like a club because  most of the time this bone-head needs "over the top" before he gets something. I watched it from beginning to end without one bathroom break or anything, and when the credits rolled I felt like a curtain had been lifted from right before my eyes.

It's something I've been told at least a thousand times in my life before, but for some reason lose sight of all too frequently: you get out of life exactly what you put into it! Treat people the way YOU want to be treated -- EVERYBODY, from your wife and kids to the mailman and to the guy standing behind you at the return line at Best Buy.

And at first you don't even have to mean it -- that part actually comes if you just act it for a little while.

Be happy with what you have right now, because right now is all you have. And when you do, the rewards will come. I had forgotten that AGAIN, and it was I that was paying the price, in every aspect of my life.

My point here is not to sell you a copy of "Mr. Magoo's 'A Christmas Carol'" or rehash what 99% of the population already knows.

My only point is that inspiration can come from any where, any time, and usually when you least expect it, if you only participate in life by listening, doing, and especially, oh, so especially, if you care about others.

Mr. Magoo reminded me to always be inspired, care about something other than myself. Work hard. Laugh hard, and often. But success in life and true happiness can only come if you love who you are, what you have -- or HAD -- and what you are willing to do today.

And he reminded me that you never, NEVER know where your next inspiration will come from.

"Oh, Magoo . . . You've done it again!"