With Christmas approaching, many of us will watch the iconic holiday movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey and Donna Reed as his wife Mary. After I finish feeling good about the story’s outcome, the movie always makes me think about my own life.
You’ll remember that George Bailey’s dreams for his life don’t come true. Instead of traveling the world as he had hoped, his father’s early death requires George to stay at home and take over the family building and loan business. When a mistake by his dopey Uncle Billy almost takes the business under, George decides that he is a complete failure and runs to the town bridge, planning to end his life in the freezing waters of the river below.
Angel-in-training Clarence appears to stop him, but George tells him that he wishes he had never been born. Clarence then takes him back to the world as it would have been if he had gotten that wish. Without George Bailey, Bedford Falls becomes a much darker, colder place called Pottersville after the man who takes it over and corrupts it. George’s wife Mary is an old maid, the working people of Bedford don’t have George’s building and loan to help them finance their own homes, and the many people that George influenced have fallen by the wayside without his help.
It makes you think, doesn’t it? What would the world be like without you? Unless we are ego maniacs or heads of governments, most of us probably think our lives haven’t made much of a difference. But have they?
I’ve asked myself that question, but no Clarence has appeared to earn his wings by giving me insight into what I might have accomplished.
I do know that without me two baby birds that fell out of their nests would have died because I didn’t rescue them and raise them to fly off as teenage bluejays.
Dozens of stray dogs that I’ve taken in would still be roaming the streets, although my furniture and floors would be a lot cleaner. But a slurp in the face by a grateful dog is worth a little dirt any day.
I know that if I hadn’t moved to Magee in 1979, this town would still have only Strutter’s and Dog ‘n Suds for fastfood choices. Somehow, my reputation for relying on fastfood at mealtimes always precedes me into a new town so that when I move there fastfood franchises pop up everywhere. You have me to thank for McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Ward’s, Sonic, Popeye’s, and Dairy Queen. The same thing happened in West Point when we moved there in 1973—if you don’t believe it, just drive through that town and check out the choices that weren’t there when word got out that the Queen of Fastfood was moving in, ready to eat!
I don’t know that I actually ever taught any of them anything, but I estimate that at least 3,500 students passed through my classes in the 31 years that I taught English. I do know that I at least exposed them to the rudiments of undangling a participle, un-splitting an infinitive, writing a persuasive essay and reciting the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales in Middle English!
If you lived through all of this and then went straight to work after high school at Bubba’s Muffler Shop, I apologize. Unless Bubba was requiring you to write a bunch of persuasive essays without dangling participles and split infinitives, I’m sure you felt that I had wasted your time. But maybe the training at least made you a better reader and critical thinker.
Many of us have lived George Bailey’s life. Your early plans and dreams may have come to nothing. But try looking at your time on earth the way Clarence forces George to do.
What have you made possible for someone else? Have you given your children a better start in life than you got?
Who have you encouraged? Sometimes it’s your word or example or suggestion that gave another person a reason to keep going.
Who have you saved from making a mistake? As a kid, George Bailey catches a mistake by his druggist employer, who gets drunk and makes up a prescription with poison instead of the correct medicine. George stops the delivery, saving the patient and preventing the ruin of the druggist’s life. Your rescue may not have been as dramatic, but a word from you may have prevented someone from going wrong.
If your children are good and hard-working adults, is it because they saw your own decency and strong work ethic? Not everybody got that in life. Be proud that you were able to give it.
Most of us don’t have movies made about our powerful impact on other lives. Often, the people we’ve helped and influenced for the good don’t even realize our effect on them in time to tell us, land we’ve forgotten it ourselves. But if you’re alive, you are influencing someone.
If you work at being the best person and the best influence you can, it won’t even matter that you didn’t achieve those early dreams for your life, and you can indeed have A Wonderful Life of your own.
