The Power of Now *and* Then

What Would Ebenezer Scrooge Say to Eckhart Tolle?

If I had to rank the stories that have transformed my life, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol might top the list. I encounter it multiple times each December and each time it speaks to me, whether it’s the original text, a local theater production, or the Muppets film version. I’m in awe of how much depth it contains.

The scenes conjured by the Ghost of Christmas Future haunt me most — Scrooge seeing how gleeful the cityfolk are in the wake of his death, the passing of Tiny Tim, his own gravestone. These horrors lead Scrooge to cry out with conviction, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

“I will live in the past, the present, and the future.”

It’s a noteworthy line juxtaposed next to another book I’ve revisited several times in the past decade: Eckart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Unlike Dickens’s work, Tolle’s book is one I can’t recommend without caveats (Tolle tips into the woo-woo), but I’d be lying if I said I don’t find some immensely powerful insights in it. He offers a map to find stillness in a busy world — to be present in the now.

“Are you worried?” Tolle writes, in a passage that illustrates his main point. “Do you have many ‘what if’ thoughts? You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. There is no way that you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mental phantom. You can stop this health-and life-corroding insanity simply by acknowledging the present moment. Become aware of your breathing. Feel the air flowing in and out of your body.”

I imagine the specter of Tolle showing up to Scrooge after his transformation and telling him no, no, no, the “what if” thoughts sparked by the ghosts (“what if Tiny Tim dies?” “what if everyone is happy when I die?”) were actually life corroding, not life giving, and that what he needs to do instead is become aware of his breath. Such a scene would feel as flat as a leaked balloon.

“That’s nice,” I can hear the transformed Scrooge saying while patting Tolle on the head, “but my experience says otherwise.”

For Scrooge, it is precisely his encounters with the past, present, and future that change him.

So, is there a way to reconcile these two works? 

I don’t have a solid answer, but I’m intrigued by the question.

My hunch is that it all hinges on the approach we take to the past and future. When I’m in the headspace of wishing I’d made different choices in the past, I can either wallow in woe about those mistakes or I can transmute my pain into making better decisions now. Likewise, when I reflect on my inevitable death and how people who know me might respond to my death, I can either let paralysis take hold of me or I can transmute my fear into making better decisions now. In either case, it’s about returning to the present. 

What I’m talking about is using A Christmas Carol as a transformative, meditative practice — a practice where I conjure up each ghost (past, present, and future) and imagine what they might show me, all for the purpose of living well right now. Given that Dickens wrote this book with the direct intent to transform British society, this approach feels aligned with the spirit of the story.

• Past: Like Scrooge, I’ve failed friends and selfishly disassociated myself from the lives of others in the past. Reflecting on these failures is a call to do the opposite now.

• Present: People I know are experiencing pain in the present, similar to the Cratchits. Seeing their pain calls me to help them now. 

• Future: I will die, as will everyone I know. Seeing my gravestone is a call to rejoice in life — to not stoically disassociate myself but to instead lean into right now.

There’s much more to explore here, including how this idea points to a possible unity between Eastern and Western approaches to transformation. For now I’ll say that meditating on the past, present, and future like this feels like a portal to transformation similar to what Scrooge experienced. My hunch is that if we’re going to truly transform ourselves, we need now and then.