It’s a Wonderful Life

Posted by Lorren on July 25, 2011

I think that most of us care at least a little bit about what kind of impact that we’ll have on the world around us. Most of us don’t get to see what the world would be like if they had never been born, like George Bailey on It’s a Wonderful Life, but sometimes we do find out, years after the fact, that something small that we did really did affect someone else (and hopefully in a good way). When I was a kid, I was a little too mean to my brother, so it’s nice to know that I did have something of a good effect on people.

The closest thing that I could ever think about that happened in my life, George Bailey style, was one summer at our family reunion when my cousin Henry was in the pool and was struggling. I picked him up and carried him over to the side of the pool. There were other people there that day; I’m sure if I hadn’t been in the pool at the time, somebody else would have saved him.

I got to see my cousin Henry over the weekend. I hadn’t seen him in a very long time; probably not since I graduated from high school. Over the years, he hasn’t spent too much time with my family; he’s actually the son of my uncle’s ex-wife, and I guess that some people in my extended family (which used to be pretty close, it’s a shame it’s not like that any more) hurt his feelings or something. It was good seeing him again. He said that he always thought that I was pretty cool, but I was a lot older than him so we had never really gotten to know each other. He also mentioned me carrying him out of that swimming pool. I guess that if I had ever been in a situation where I thought that I was going to drown and someone pulled me from the pool, I might remember it, but I was surprised that he had remembered it.

We all do small things every day, and occasionally we do a big thing. We don’t have to pull somebody out of a swimming pool or give up our dreams to save a small town’s building and loan, but if we do the right thing, we might find someday that we did affect somebody’s life. We may not hear about it for years, or even in this life, but we’re all here to do something. Some day, we may find out that we had a wonderful life after all.