A world free of income disparity, insecurity and fear, violence and crime, wars within and betweeen nations, hatrid, social exclusion, discrimination, corruption,,,,となるよう、願いたい思いでいっぱいになります。
ほっとけない、という思いはもちろんとても強い、けど、ひとりにできることは、ほんとにわずかなこと。
でも、夢を失わず、仲間を作って、輪を広げて、変えていくことを諦めない。
深刻で完治させ難いさまざまな病に陥っているわれら人間の世界。
2007年も、希望を失うことなく、またそういう困難と闘い続ける1年にしたいものですね。
クリスマスというと、思い出すことがあります。
イブだったと思いますが、Charles Dickens の A Christmas Carol の朗読会の思い出です。
Ebenezer Scrooge is a penny-pinching miser in the first degree. He cares nothing for the people around him and mankind exists only for the money that can be made through exploitation and intimidation. He particularly detests Christmas which he views as 'a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer'. Scrooge is visited, on Christmas Eve, by the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley who died seven Christmas Eves ago.
Marley, a miser from the same mold as Scrooge, is suffering the consequences in the afterlife and hopes to help Scrooge avoid his fate. He tells Scrooge that he will be haunted by three spirits. These three spirits, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, succeed in showing Scrooge the error of his ways. His glorious reformation complete, Christmas morning finds Scrooge sending a Christmas turkey to his long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, and spending Christmas day in the company of his nephew, Fred, whom he had earlier spurned.
Scrooge's new-found benevolence continues as he raises Cratchit's salary and vows to assist his family, which includes Bob's crippled son, Tiny Tim. In the end Dickens reports that Scrooge became ' as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew'.
Jim and Della Dillingham Young are a couple who are very much in love with each other, but can barely afford their one-room apartment opposite the elevated train. For Christmas, Della decides to buy Jim a chain for his prized pocket watch given to him by his father. To raise the funds, she has her hair cut off and sold to make a wig. Meanwhile, Jim decides to sell his watch to buy Della a beautiful set of combs for her lovely, knee-length hair.
The moral of the story is that physical possessions, however valuable they may be, are of little value in the grand scheme of things. The true unselfish love that the characters, Jim and Della, share is greater than their possessions.
O. Henry ends the story by clarifying the metaphor between the characters in the story, Della and James (or Jim), and the Biblical Magi.