I’m Living a Terrific Existence

“I know what I’m going to do for the next year, and the next year, and the year after that...I’m going to shake the dust off of this crummy old town and I’m going to see the world, says George Bailey in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” For my youngest friends who follow my blog, you can goggle it if you have no idea of the film I’m referring too.

The film follows the life of a George Bailey in his small town and while the film has a happy ending, it exposes the creeping despair and bitterness that comes from the loss of George’s dreams. The film offers a powerful visual of the gap that forms between knowing what George will do “the next year and the year after that” and the reality of living that leaves him wondering whether his is a wonderful life.

Despite the film’s often saccharine sentimentality, (my thoughts, but not my wife’s), it nevertheless presents a realistic picture of lost or abandoned dreams. Like the film’s main character, George, in my sixty nine years of living, I have had dreams of “seeing the world” and “kicking the dust off” of my ordinary life and existence. My ideal plans and goals called me out into an ever-expanding future of possibility and adventure.

It is in this sense, viewing the film the other evening, for the umpteenth time, it offered me the opportunity to enter into its narrative a chance to look into the chasm between my many cherished ideals and the often sober reality of my life. The glimpse into what is often a gaping chasm of lost hopes and abandoned dreams a frightening opportunity to let go. Facing the death of my dreams head on forced a moment of decision. Will I become bitter by fixating on what has been lost, or will I walk forward in hope on a path of yet unseen possibility?

I am discovering, as I grow older, that when my hands grasped tightly and tenaciously around ideals, it is best that I give way to new realities. It is in M. Craig Barnes’ book, “When God Interrupts: Finding New Life Through Unwanted Change” that I caught hold of his suggestion that the journey away from my own sense of what makes for a terrific life is actually the process of conversion. He writes: “It is impossible to follow Jesus and not be led away from something. That journey away from the former places and toward the new place is what converts us. Conversion is not simply the acceptance of a theological formula for eternal salvation. Of course it is that, but it is so much more. It is the discovery of God’s painful, beautiful, ongoing creativity along the way in our lives.”

John 21:18 comes into focus a bit better for me, as well. “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall save it.” As Jesus prophesied to Peter, this invitation is to a place “where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18). The journey away from “the former place” is hard; because I kick at the idea and don’t want to abandon the places I think make for a great life.

Significantly, Barnes argues that a wonderful life on our own terms is not a realistic option. “In spite of all our carefulness and hard work, we probably will not achieve the life of our dreams. In fact, our dreams are precisely the things that have abandoned us. But it is then that we hear the invitation of Jesus Christ, ‘Now is the opportunity to step out, walk forward and give your life to God.’” It continues to be a frightening invitation, to be sure, but one indeed that offers the possibility of a terrific life.