It's A Wonderful Life

We all know the movie, it plays this time of year.  I reckon it is my favorite movie.  I will watch it any time of year. It would be neat wouldn't it, if we could have that view of how our lives impacted the lives of others. Maybe when we get to heaven we get to see.  Maybe we get to find out if we made a difference anywhere alone the way.  We want to, we want to believe that our life has importance beyond paying the bills and doing the dishes.  People who have children, they probably have a better sense of their importance in the lives of their children.  Some for the better and I suppose some for the not so better.  It would be cool though; to see how our choices affected the people around us, you know that whole pebble in the pond and the ripple across the water.  We need to be needed, and we need to be wanted, and for most people, we need to feel that our lives make a difference.  I watch a lot of the MSNBC Lockup reality show.  I am intrigued by people who have killed.  People who have committed horrendous crimes, I wonder what makes them tick.  I question if evil is real, if people are born evil or if circumstances stole their compassion and their humanity? More and more it feels the whole of human kind is losing its humanity.  So I wonder if my existence and the choices I have made - have they made any difference.  Now I couldn't be like Jimmy Stewart in the movie, but I do hope I have made better some corners of the world I have lived in.  We all do, don't we? We should want to, shouldn't we? What is the point if we live only to please ourselves and serve our own needs?  That is said alot by the prisoners interviewed on Lockup.  I did it because I wanted to.  It made me feel good.  I didn't think about anyone else.  That's not cool.  It is that time of year when we are full of family and love, and giving, and people are happy - well not all people; some people don't have the gift of friendship, or have lost their families.  Some folks are all alone and these next four weeks are about the worst weeks of their lives.  How, as a society can we help these people? How can we find them and somehow help them - some people don't want to be help.  As hard as it is to believe some people just don't want to be happy.  Miserable is their happiness - that is hard to believe.  When you look around you see some who have so much and others with so little - is one better than the other; I don't think so. It is like bras and breast size, too small is difficult to find a comfortable bra and too big is difficult to find a comfortable bra - It is a wonderful life though - Life is filled with so many possibilities and there is hope everywhere.  Inside of each of us it the power to love, to encourage, to extend ourselves. Still, it would be cool to see what our world would have been like had we never been born.  That is probably not very humble is it? Though, after seeing our world without us in it, we might be very humbled.  Maybe I'll go get the DVD from downstairs and give it a watch.  Always makes me cry.  No matter how many times I see it, I always cry.  The greatest gifts we give are not what the television commercials lead us to believe - it is the everyday being there, it is the small gifts.  It is our time, a shoulder, listening, a hug - it is the smile on someones face when they open a Christmas present and it is exactly what they wanted, and the smile on our face for having hit the nail on the head.  It is a wonderful life.