Wednesday Wisdom, 11/28/2018

Every year, at some point between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I watch It’s a Wonderful Life on TV. I make fun of it all the way through, because, let’s face it, there’s lots to make fun of. (I mean, really, if George Bailey wasn’t born, Mary would be a frumpy, old-maid librarian, complete with glasses and hair pinned up in a bun? Forget for a minute that being an unmarried librarian is far from a fate worse than death, isn’t it just as likely she would have married George’s old friend, Sam Wainwright?) But no matter how much I make fun of it, I always tear up when I read Clarence’s message at the end of the movie: No man is a failure who has friends.

Mark Twain, from whom the quote is borrowed, and George Bailey, too, may have been men of many close friends. I am not. I have a small circle of dear friends that I love, a slightly larger circle of people I consider friends because I like them and we shares some commonalities, and an even larger circle of acquaintances who I enjoy seeing now and again about town, maybe even could be friends with under certain circumstances, but in reality we’re just not.

But it’s not about numbers. The mere having of friends, no matter how many, enhances our lives. To have someone to share our good fortunes and our bad with, someone to spend time with, someone to reminisce with as we grow old, that’s what makes this a wonderful life. So go be a friend to someone. Do something nice, something kind, something generous and caring, and let someone know they matter. And also that you matter. As we learn from that other Christmas classic, A Christmas Carol, it’s not too late.

And if those three spirits of Christmas should happen to move you, it’s also not too late to start a pension plan for 2018. I’ll be happy to help.

#Wednesday Wisdom #Christmas #It's a Wonderful Life #A Christmas Carol