[From The Connection Cure archive — originally published in 2021]

“No man is a failure who has friends,” writes Clarence the Angel to George Bailey at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. But when the classic debuted seventy-five years ago, that’s exactly what critics called the film’s director, Frank Capra: a failure. 

For one, it was a financial failure—a box office flop sinking the studio a half million dollars, enough to kill it altogether. It was also a professional failure, straining Capra’s relationships with screenwriters. And perhaps the biggest failure was the messaging: a 1946 Times review criticized the film’s ‘sentimentality’, claiming that Capra’s “illusory” and “optimistic” view of life contrasted its “average realities.” 

In other words, it suggested, humans were really not as generous or wonderful as the film depicted.

Call the reviewer a scrooge, but studies suggest most of us agree with the Times’ gloomy take; we may see the good in humanity when we’re high on Hallmark movies, but what about the other eleven months of the year? When not prompted by bell-ringing street Santas or Giving Tuesday emails or customary end-of year-cheer, are people actually generous? 

I didn’t think so last April, when one of my editors asked me to follow-up on a story I'd written at the start of the pandemic. In March 2020, while most of us were couch-bound with Joe Exotic and sourdough loaf, armies of ordinary New Yorkers worked around the clock on Google docs and paper flyers and phone calls to make sure anyone who needed groceries could get them. The editor wondered what those groups were up to one year later. 

I was sure I'd be let down. After all, how many times had I, in a moment of crisis, given a guilt-tinged $20 or put my name on a volunteer list, only to unsubscribe months later? These groups, I thought, would be no different.

But I was wrong. In New York City, the place most often chided for its cold anonymity, thousands of locals have spent the last twenty months turning once-temporary grocery deliveries to full-fledged safety nets—where tiny tots have diapers, older folks have company, and new New Yorkers have translators. The same streets that see F-bombs and fits of road rage also see community fridges and little libraries and a belief that everyone should have all they need to get by. 

American history, I would learn, is ripe with these look-out-for-thy-neighbor projects, formally called mutual aid. Throughout the twentieth century, mutual aid looked like new immigrants, in the absence of credit history, lending money to one another, so they could have a more equal chance at starting businesses and buying property. It looked like the Black Panthers, in absence of government support, organizing free breakfasts so ten thousand kids could get healthy meals for free.  When usual protections fail, people— in their ordinary George Bailey-like generosity —step in. 

Still, it’s easy to believe in the myth of cynicism. And our anxiety-inducing newsfeeds, one-liner politicians, and outrage-obsessed culture tend to further breed this sort of confirmation bias; if you look for narcissism, pessimism, and all of the other ‘isms’ that make for a less-than-wonderful life, you’ll probably find them.

But the opposite is also true; that if you take stock of your year and of your own Bedford Falls, you’ll probably find kindness—moments of small but remarkable thoughtfulness:  The random man who fixed your flat tire. The colleague who sent you congratulations cookies.  The aunt who braved the always-backed-up BQE to drop candy on your doorstep when you had COVID. The friends who ruined their outfits to indulge your fantasy of an egg toss for adults. The baker who stayed after hours to hold your CitiBike while you tried, in vain, to hoist an engagement cake to its rack.

The greeting cards and text check-ins and ‘just-because’ treats.

The small talk of store-clerks and howls of marathon cheerleaders and passing masked strangers who smile with their cheeks.

We don’t need an Angel to confirm what we ritually realize this time of year—an insight that the ‘failure’ Frank Capra would see viewers appreciate long after his film first preached it:

The plans that never happened and to-do lists never completed and ambitions never realized matter little in the grand scheme of life. Instead, we realize, it’s the generosity we give and receive along the way that makes it truly wonderful.

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