"It's A Wonderful Life" (1946) and holiday depression

Hello, Steve Barnes here with Life Writing Live. Happy Monday. There's only two weeks until Christmas. Hope your shopping is getting done if not finished. I wanted to talk today about some friends of mine mentioned that reminded me that the holidays can be very hard for people who are alone and feeling depressed. So I thought I'd comment about one of my very favorite holiday movies, It's a Wonderful Life, and how that relates to depression during the holidays. You know, we all know the story of It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is a kid who adores his father's commitment to, you know, service, basically. But he also dreams of leaving the town of Bedford Falls. He wants to travel the world, but the needs of others constantly impinge on his personal desires, starting with the rescue of his brother from freezing water, which leads him to a damaged eardrum and the subsequent 4F categorization that keeps him from going off to war. He almost manages to escape Bedford Falls at one point, but realizes that he loves Mary Hatch, who's had a crush on him since childhood, and he decides to try to build life with her. They're heading out of town on a lavish honeymoon when a run on his late father's building in loan forced him to give up his plans. He scales down his dreams, deciding to hit up the building in loan and raise a family to be try to be the man that his father was. The problem, the opposition here is that he's battling the venomous greed of Mr. Potter, who owns most of the town. But after years of indirect and relatively moral opposition, Potter finally crosses the line and Steeles deliberately chooses not to return and lies by omission a critical bank deposit. George's uncle is now implicated in theft and George in bank fraud. Crushed and beaten, George sees his entire life as a failure. His lifetime of service attracts the attention of guardian angels who, in a spectacular miracle, show him what Bedford Falls and the world would have been like without him. From seeing himself as a failure, George now sees himself as the richest man in town. With love, family contribution, community. Potter doesn't even come close. He has none of those things. For those who are ticked with the notion that Potter got away with it, I suggest that you go to YouTube and look up Saturday Night Live, It's a Wonderful Life. There's a great little comedy skit about what happened to Potter after the end of It's a Wonderful Life. And if you haven't seen it, you should now the fact that George's despair on the bridge. Remember that scene where he thinks about killing himself? Thinking that he's worth more dead than alive. It's not a rare experience. The Christmas holidays often trigger depression in millions of people. And there are so many reasons why this happens. Loss. We lose family, friends, lovers over the years. It's an unvarying constant of human experience. Roads not taken. The end of every year gives us perspective on our lives. Another year gone, another year older, more gray hair, more aches and pains. What have we accomplished? Where are we on life's journey? Loss of parents and friends contributes to this as the realization that we too are mortal becomes less and less avoidable. I recently lost the last blood relative from my father, my parents generation. That is kind of final. That means I'm next comparison to past holidays. If we were at all, if we were at all fortunate, our parents did all they could to protect us and nurture us and know, make our holidays as festive as possible. They knew that we would need every emotional resource possible to survive our adult existence. And the creation of these touchstones. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. Are moments of joy most of us can count on and look forward to. It might get a little harder every year to surrender to the Christmas spirit, but if you can, if you are surrounded by love and joy and let it in, it connects you to the sense of limitless possibility and wonder that you felt as a child. So it's worth the effort. Almost 40 years ago now, my mother was diagnosed with aggressive form of lung cancer. No, she'd never smoked. We'd gotten her out of the hospital just before Thanksgiving into a room in the house of our dear friends, the little Johns. I remember carrying her up the stairs. She felt as if she weighed about 70 pounds. I also remember sitting in her room trying to see the loving face that I remember in the wasted countenance of the skeletal thing in that bed. She called friends and asked them to come visit her for her last Thanksgiving. That was the way she put it. She died about two weeks later, smack dab between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And as families do, my sister Joyce and I dealt with it the best we could every year. That memory sits right between the two holidays. That memory of her confusion, pain, fear. That memory of my own sense of loss. About two years later, I married and my wife and I eventually had my daughter Nikki. And one Christmas when Nikki was about 4 years old, my sense of loss and grief was almost overwhelming. I was sitting on the couch, miserable, holding back tears. Nikki was playing with a Christmas toy, as I recall. I think it was a ball. I'd never seen my mother smile Again she would never get to see the success for which she laid the foundations. I remember the childhood sense of joy experienced on Christmas morning. That total feeling of love and warmth and safety and miracles. And knew I'd never feel that again. That pain was overwhelming, hammered in my guts, drained all happiness from my heart. I sat there, eyes closed, sinking into grief, and then I felt something pressed into my hand. I opened my eyes. It was Nicky's ball. She was gazing up at me with those big, brown loving eyes. Here, Daddy, she said. Merry Christmas. I looked at that ball and then at her. And I realized that while I might never have that sense of total warmth and safety again, Nikki could and did and felt our connection so deeply that she'd experienced my pain, known something was wrong with her Daddy, and had given me all she could to alleviate it. I swept her into my arms, covering her face with kisses, overwhelmed with love and joy and gratitude. We lose everything in life, but if you open yourself, you also connect with all of creation, one heart at a time. The joy you felt in childhood still there, lurking inside you and can be triggered by unselfishly giving to others. The living heart of those you loved and lost still beats in time with yours. If ever they built, they beat with yours at all. There are so many things that we can do to connect ourselves with love and joy, and you should seek those things out. The company of happy people, places, things and activities that brought you pleasure as a child. Giving to those in need. And one of my very favorites, the realization that at every moment of your life, you've done the best you could, done all you could do to live up to your highest values. George Bailey wanted to travel the world, but he needed to be a good and decent man in the mold of his father, a husband, a parent, a contributing businessman, an honest and caring soul. There are people who think that money and fame and power are the greatest gifts of life. And on their Deathbeds, with almost 100% reliability, people say that the most valuable things, the things held most highly, are love, connection, contribution, self discovery, living with courage and a sense of adventure. None of the things that Mr. Potter had. And George, surrounded by the people who loved and trusted him, had everything that little Georgie needed and wanted. Even if older Georgie forgot sometimes what was really important. As the song goes, you can't get everything that you want because wanting is infinite. But you can get everything that you need. And the beautiful thing is that you can feel that warmth so critical to our own health, by extending it to others. The fire you carry warms you as well. As we enter this season, please take care of yourselves and seek ways to help others as well. Help them remember who they are and what they once valued. It is so easy to lose our way and forget that there is nothing, nothing in the world as warming as the small gifts of love and caring from people who just see us care about us. I never in my life got a more precious gift than Nikki's ball and never enjoyed anything more than handing it back to her with a kiss. Be kind to yourself and each other and if you'd like a visualization that helps you connect to your heart. It used to be the flagship of my entire line of products, but it's available for free at www.the ancientchild.com the ancient child.com if you enjoyed this message, please share it. You take care. Love you all and we'll be speaking more about these things as we head toward the end of the year and head towards my favorite holiday, Christmas. Take care.