Long ago, a fellow teacher far wiser than myself suggested a brilliant paper assignment. Picture the whole story from Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, but now imagine that George Bailey comes home after his revelation, that his life is truly worth living, only to find no one there but his wife and children, and the bank examiner has him hauled off in handcuffs. You could even up the ante. Imagine he comes home, and Mary and the kids have had enough, and they have left him.
If George Bailey ended up in prison for bank fraud, abandoned by everyone, would he still have lived a wonderful life?
That question cuts straight to the bone. We all expect the "happy" ending, of course, but is the happy ending just measured by the circumstances? What if George really didn't have any friends at that moment? Would that have made him a failure?
I feel a little dirty suggesting that Clarence's inscription in that book might not be true. Many of us don't have friends. Are we failures?
During my Wilderness Years, I would spend every Christmas Eve with a bottle of Irish whiskey and a pack of Dunhill cigarettes, and watch both the usual prime time network showing of It's a Wonderful Life, followed by the Christmas Papal Mass in Rome with John Paul II. I would pound my fists, curse the world, and I would cry. I would condemn myself, my condition, and everyone and everything I could possibly think of.
But somehow I lived, and I still got up that next morning, and it was precisely because Frank Capra and the Pope had reminded me of what mattered. A good life never had anything to do with what happened to me, but it had everything to do with what I did. I was already fighting to be a Stoic, though that was not always clear to me at the time.
George Bailey learned that he was a happy man just because he was a good man, and all the Potters in the world, all the crooks and abusers, could never change that about him. I know exactly how I would have written that paper assignment.
"You sit around here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world revolves around you and your money! Well, it doesn't, Mr. Potter! In the in the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider!"
"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"
"Clarence! Clarence! Help me, Clarence! Get me back! Get me back, I don't care what happens to me! Get me back to my wife and kids! Help me, Clarence, please! Please! I wanna live again. I wanna live again. I want to live again. Please, God, let me live again."
I learned that the Stoics had always been right, and Clarence had always been right. George always had friends, because he had people he loved, cared for, and to whom he dedicated all he had. Friends are not friends because of what they do for us, but because of what we can do for them.
They did indeed show their friendship to him by saving his bacon, then and there, but that could easily have been otherwise. What mattered was that he had always shown his friendship to them by giving up everything else he wanted for the sake of his service, for his entire life.
It would have made no difference, I think, if George had come home to shame and punishment. He'd done what he needed to do, and he understood that completely. He had learned that it was all about the giving, and never about demanding or receiving.
That was living. That is why George Bailey is the richest man in the world.
Most everyone remembers the final scene of the film, which is indeed powerful. This is, however, the scene that tells me all I need to know about the merit of the man, and the merit of the woman who was with him all the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPkJH6BT7dM
Written in 12/2002
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