Bedford Falls to Houston
George Bailey as the reluctant helper
“Years weigh on a person like pounds of lead. The days melt into one another, merge to form one whole block, a big anchor. And the person is lost.”
- Clarice Lispector, from “The Escape”
I watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” again on the plane ride back to New York City from Houston. I had flown to Houston last minute for Christmas to spend it with my younger sister and brother, while my parents and other siblings were in Nigeria, because it would have felt bad to have them spending the holidays by themselves. And because I also didn’t want to spend that day alone.
Everything that can be said about the greatness of “It’s A Wonderful Life” has already been said, so I don’t think it’s necessary to talk about whether the movie is good or not. My feeling on the latest watch was that I would have liked it to have ended before the angel appears to show him how worst off everything and everyone would have been without him there. That part resolved his conflict and wrapped the whole thing up in a nice sentimental bow, and I don’t think it’s as interesting as the rest of the movie was.
In my mind, it should have ended with George Bailey standing there ready to jump and commit suicide — listing all the merits of his death, how it would free him from the endless obligations to other people and help him escape from the corrosive thought that he had wasted his life doing what everyone else wanted from him, but not what he wanted for himself — and then not doing it. He would have prepared to end his life, knowing that this was the true power that he had to stop the cycle that he was stuck in, and then willingly walked back into that cycle.
The reason for that is because the making of that choice to push what he wants away for what is better for everyone else is an intentional choice that he continuously makes in the movie. Through all of his frustrations with taking over his father’s position, marrying and having children, being stuck in Bedford Falls, and his envy at seeing his brother and others do much bigger things out in the world, the question for him is always, why doesn’t he just leave? Sure, if he left the business, the people of the town would be at the mercy of Henry Potter, and if he left his family, his wife and kids would struggle without him, but the ability to do so is still available to him. He can say no to staying. He can just leave.
I remember reading an interview once where one of the great writers, and I can’t remember particularly who right now, where he said that the best way to live life is to think about committing suicide without ever doing it. To remind yourself, within all your struggles, that you have the great power to end it all, but to continue moving forward. The possibility of suicide is a perfect solution for him because he seemed to understand that his great problem isn’t that the conditions around him had boxed him into a life that he didn’t want, or at least felt lesser than the one he had dreamed of, but he was the one who was boxing himself in. To escape his condition, he needed to escape himself.
Potter is a great antagonist as a wealthy and relentless man, who cares about nothing but domination and profit, but Bailey’s truest enemy is his own self. Every moment that he’s granted a choice to choose himself over others, he chooses others. When he’s told that he has to run the business or Potter wins, he chooses to run the business. When Potter offers him the high-paying job, he turns it down to protect the people. When they need money to stay open, he accepts the money him and his wife were going to use for their honeymoon. And after each time, he looks at his life and is frustrated because he knows what the cost of those choices are. I think that frustration is important and not something to be soothed, because it is there where his courage is most evident.
I’ve written about this in my book but after my youngest brother went to college, I remember sitting down with my mom on our porch talking about how frustrated I was that it felt that my life had passed me by. From the time that I was going with my parents to their night classes to taking care of my siblings until they were all in and then out of college, I told her that I had spent so much of my life helping everyone else that my life had been practically mortgaged for theirs. What she said in response was that sometimes in the world, there are people who are put in the position, by character and by their individual and economical capacity, to help others. And she asked me not to see that necessarily as a punishment, but to try to understand that it is a special thing to be someone who can help people and who people can trust with that responsibility.
What she didn’t say but I knew was that I could also say no. I could stop at any time and go live the life I want. When one of my siblings reached out to me, or one of my parents asked me to do something, or a friend came to me for help, I could have said no to them and went and did what I wanted to do at that time instead. That choice is always available.
The frustration at losing the life you’ve dreamed of is then important because you have to remember what you’re losing. Every choice that we make closes the door to numerous other choices that were available, one road taken means that another is forever unavailable, we can’t go back in time and redo our lives. Even if we were to return to the same two choices, it is never in the same conditions as it was the first time. This means that every choice made is also a declaration of who you are in that moment, and who you want to be going forward. These choices, big and small, don’t ever stop coming.
Bailey knows that every choice that he makes in favor of the people of Bedford Falls means that he gets further away from the possibility of the other life that he wants. It’s a painful recognition. He feels that his life is not expansive because of it, which I don’t think means that he doesn’t understand the value of the life and the people around him, he understands it more than anyone else because he is the one continuously choosing to protect those people and their happiness. He knows that they’re valuable, and that he has a wonderful life, but what haunts him is the life that he never got to live. And the person responsible for that is not the townspeople or his wife and kids, but himself, because he knows because of who he is, and how much he values those people, he cannot choose the possibility of a different life if it puts them in jeopardy.
So the frustration that his other life is passing him by isn’t something that should be soothed, it is something that he lives with. It makes him a bit of a tragic hero whose destiny comes out of his character rather than the conditions of the world, though the world is where he makes the choices that showcases that character. He is stuck in Bedford Falls because of who he is, and what he wishes for is that he was different, but he knows that he can’t be different.
What’s left for him then is to rage against the trap of himself. He damns Potter, his father, the townspeople, his wife and kids, the house, the staircase, the whole town. He yells and screams. He throws things around. He walks off and goes to kill himself. That rage, that frustration, that disdain, is his consolation. To scream about your pain and wish that you could tear the whole story apart is one of the only freedoms you have when you recognize that you’re locked into a situation because of who you are, and your fate is determined not by some outside force, but because you can’t be anything else no matter how much you wish you could be. It is also an expression that shows that all of the choices that he makes have their costs, and that he’s bearing them. And that he’s willing to do so.
The cost for the flight to Houston wasn’t cheap, and when I got there, I saw that my siblings had little to nothing in their apartment that they just moved into. So I took them grocery shopping on top of their Christmas gifts, took them to dinner, and then left them with money to help out with their rent. All in all, the trip cost me around $2500, money that I had been saving to use to pay off credit card debt.
As soon as I got back to my apartment and saw the total cost, I was mad. I started ranting to myself about how the younger ones don’t take good care of themselves, about how they need better jobs, and why it’s not fair that I always have to help them out even when I’m struggling as well.
The next morning my mom sent a message, asking how my siblings were doing in Houston. And then said that she would call them, but that “I believe you took great care of them.” Because of course, what else was I supposed to do but what I know I’m supposed to do. But at least I can throw some stuff around every now and then.