It’s that time of year where my family and I go into movie marathon time. The one movie I always make sure to watch, especially during the holiday season is Frank Capra’s 1947 film “It’s a Wonderful life”. I feel that this movie has an incredible amount to offer to this day. I also feel that it’s probably been a contributing factor in aiding thousands of people contemplating suicide, reaching out for help and either indirectly or directly preventing suicide. Or at least helping someone re-evaluate that ultimate decision.
This film is an incredible classic with James Stewart playing George Bailey and Donna Reed playing Mary Hatch. The story starts of with George contemplating suicide. However the angels from the heavens decide to intervene and send a second class angel down to earth to stop George and re-evaluate is life. But before the second class angel can help it is informed of the life story of George Bailey.
Since the beginning of his life George had been on a mission to leave his small town and travel around the world and become an architect to build incredible buildings. As George grows up and through out his life his friends and family fall in to dangerous and some times life threatening situations. But George always saves the day. Unfortunately usually at great cost to himself and his dream of leaving his small town to travel and go to college.
The movie spends about 1 hour and 30 minutes of it’s 2 hour and 10 min runtime going over the details of George’s life. This was a fact I found funny after all these years because it’s 1.5 hours of back story for huge heart wrenching life altering twist at the end. In the last 30 minutes of the movie the second class angel jumps off the bridge and George ,like he has always done, jumps off the bridge into the icy river water to save this angel in human form. In a way that is very common of people in real life. George didn’t have the power to save himself but for others he would brave anything without a moments hesitation. This however did not stop George’s suicidal ideation, instead it only distracted him for a moment. The second class angel in an effort to make a permanent change in George Bailey’s mind the angel takes George back into the world with only one small change.
It’s the same town, with the same people. However there was never a George Bailey born. George gets to see everything that happened if he never existed. People he saved in his life are dead in this alternate universe. His old friends are abandoned and in poverty. His kids don’t exist because he never did. His wife is sad and alone. The town is in ruins because he was never there to help people get back on their feet.
The part that I found interesting, that I was eluding to before. Was that this movie took 1.5 hours to show is life. But it only took about 30 minuets of showing George a life without him to get him to realize that he had and enormous amount of worth to his community. He wasn’t a failure and the world was truly a better place with him in it. Now in movie time it was mainly and hour and a half to show George’s 30ish years of life. However, that 30 minutes chunk of movie spends maybe only 2 or 3 hours of showing George the alternate universe where he never existed in order to change his mind and beg to live again.
3 hours to walk someone off the ledge and get them to see the error of thinking that world would be a better place with out them. I think about this a lot. What a lot of people don’t realize is that being depressed is not being sad. If you’re sad there’s a reason for it. Someone yelled at you at work, a person scratched your car, rent is due and you’re cutting it close. Depression is an irrational delusional long lasting mood that puts you in a sense of sadness. Depression creates the false narrative that everyone hate’s you. Or you’re a waste of space and energy and the world would be a better place without you. And that you would be doing the world a favor by taking yourself out of it.
But the only way to break a delusion and false narrative especially about one’s self is to challenge the delusion with a reality check. It might only take a surprise phone call, praise at a well done job, external act of caring that could walk someone off the edge and confront their delution. A lot of times once some one walk from the edge they realize how much danger they were in and how close they were to suicide but now they have the desire to try to want to live in a world without the depression. That’s where therapy and if necessary medicine can come in to prevent recurrence and give coping mechanisms to not only combat the depression but also recognize warning signs on when to seek extra help.
This film means a lot to me, in a way it’s a reminder and a wake up call. That I add something to this world. My friends and family don’t want to live in a world without me. I hope you’ll watch this movie too. I hope it can do for you what it has does for me. I think everyone adds something to this world and if they have the desire to, they can make it a better place. A place that counts on their existence.
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