Something Big and Important
With quotes from the film "It's a Wonderful Life"
“I...I wanna do something big and something important.”
George Bailey says this early in arguably Frank Capra’s best film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Many of us have said or thought something similar in our attempt to find meaning in life. George has a hard time in the film seeing how anything that he does matters in the world. He had such great plans to go out in the world, build bridges and skyscrapers, leave the crummy town of Bedford Falls behind him. But things seem to come up every time he has a chance to leave that need him specifically to fix them. So it goes that George stays in Bedford Falls and starts a family and scrapes by as best he can to help others at every step of the way. His desires for being big and important do not go away, but rather are shoved into the background as he never has the time to pursue those lofty goals.
In a moment of crisis George despairs and thinks he has failed in all aspects of life, thinking maybe the world would be better off without him in it. He is blessed to see what exactly the world would be like without him, and all of the lives around town that he has blessed in so many little ways. His guardian angel Clarence puts it this way, “Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?”
An important question to ask ourselves is why exactly did George have such an impact on his community for the better? Why not a negative impact like Mr. Potter? Why not no impact? George himself would have guessed that he was in one of the latter two situations and yet so many individuals felt truly blessed by his actions. It is subtle in the film, but I think purposeful that not everyone sees the same needs as George. Things that he thinks of as necessary to fulfill his basic duties as a man of honor are things that other people would go ahead and leave behind assuming they would turn out alright. When George sees his brother fall in the icy water, he immediately runs and dives in to help while others who are closer are slower to help. When his father dies, and the family business is threatened unless George stays, he decides to stay where many others would have left it to its fate. When the people are rushing the banks to get their money he stops his own honeymoon, though his wife asks him not to go, and reasons with the people while using his own honeymoon money (again at the behest of his wife) to help the people get by until the banks reopen. Time and again George sees good deeds as necessities instead of seeing them as options that would be ok without him. It is that attitude that over time turns this small town nobody into a truly great man, somebody big and important, at least in the eyes of so many friends and family. Jimmy Stewart put it this way in an interview in 1987:
“Today, after some 40 years, I’ve heard the film called an American cultural phenomenon. Well, maybe so, but it seems to me there is nothing phenomenal about the movie itself. It’s simply about an ordinary man who discovers that living each ordinary day honorably, with faith in God and a selfless concern for others, can make for a truly wonderful life.”
George Bailey is an ordinary man in that he doesn’t seem to put forth any superhuman efforts. Each act of good is something we can see ourselves doing. What makes him extraordinary, what can make each of us extraordinary, is the repeated application of small acts of integrity. By making personal integrity and charity a habit, we will set ourselves up for a truly wonderful life.
Audio:
https://open.substack.com/pub/wisdominbestbooks/p/5-something-big-and-important?r=4l1y9b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true