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They say an old dog cannot learn new tricks. Sometimes we avoid change, even change which promises great benefits, because we are familiar with the old ways and fearful of the unknown. Yet change is inevitable. All things change. If not now, soon. If not soon, later. The only thing constant is change.

Why, then, do we find it hard to make changes within ourselves? Even when we want to change, it’s so much easier said than done. It’s hard to start that diet, put down that drink, snuff out that cigarette.

Scrooge desperately needs a change. His life choices have left him cold, hard, bitter, and alone. Don’t we all have days when we feel that way? Not every day (I hope!). But we all have that potential. And so we close in. We turn away. We isolate. It’s hard to greet the world with a smile when all you want to do is hide under the covers.

The three spirits remind Scrooge of the man—and the boy—he once was. They show him how he lost his way. They warn him of what will happen if he does not change. But Scrooge summons up the courage to face his fears, and he makes that change. His dark night of the soul is followed by a new dawn of hope.

Not all of us have ghostly visitors to show us the error of our ways. But that’s why Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. That’s why Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, why Homer wrote the Iliad, why Kurt Vonnegut wrote all those astonishing books. That’s why James Still and Jon Robin Baitz and Katori Hall and Ken Ludwig write plays. The theatre shows us what life can be, what the world can be, if we are open to the possibilities.