Its a Wonderful Life

Tonight, Christmas Eve, my family and I have enjoyed many of our usual traditions. One of these traditions is watching "Its a Wonderful Life". My family has watched this every year...and it wasnt until a few years years ago that I joined in on this tradition...and the year I finally watched it, it seemed the most fitting... and is still fitting today.
Here is the story line to the movie, incase you havent seen it...

As the film opens, it's Christmas Eve, 1946, and George, who has long considered himself a failure, faces financial ruin and arrest and is seriously contemplating suicide. High above Bedford Falls, two celestial voices discuss Bailey's dilemma and decide to send down eternally bumbling angel Clarence Oddbody who after 200 years has yet to earn his wings, to help George out. But first, Clarence is given a crash course on George's life, and the multitude of selfless acts he has performed: rescuing his younger brother from drowning, losing the hearing in his left ear in the process; enduring a beating rather than allow a grieving druggist to deliver poison by mistake to an ailing child; foregoing college and a long-planned trip to Europe to keep the Bailey Building and Loan from letting its Depression-era customers down; and, most important, preventing town despot Potter from taking over Bedford Mills and reducing its inhabitants to penury. Along the way, George has married his childhood sweetheart Mary, who has stuck by him through thick and thin. But even the love of Mary and his children are insufficient when George, faced with an $8000 shortage in his books, becomes a likely candidate for prison thanks to the vengeful Potter. Bitterly, George declares that he wishes that he had never been born, and Clarence, hoping to teach George a lesson, shows him how different life would have been had he in fact never been born. After a nightmarish odyssey through a George Bailey-less Bedford Falls (now a glorified slum called Potterville), wherein none of his friends or family recognize him, George is made to realize how many lives he has touched, and helped, through his existence; and, just as Clarence had planned, George awakens to the fact that, despite all its deprivations, he has truly had a wonderful life.

This year, I am grateful for my family tradition of watching this film about how important our lives are.... it inspires me and helps me to realize that their are lives we touch that sometimes go unnoticed, and each life is important. I know that depression is something I have struggled with for a few years now...to the point of trying to take my own life, like George did in the film... but, I am truly grateful that I am still here living and learning more about who I am and how valuable my life really is. There are so many things I need/want to learn.
I want to thank all of my family and friends who have stuck by me through my MANY ups and downs.... and I know there are more ups and downs ahead, but it would be so much more difficult to face whats ahead without all of you in my life who love and support me.

Now...a few of my favorite quotes from the movie :)

"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?"

"You've really had a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to just throw it away?"

"Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends."



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