"Ohh, there must be some easier way for me to get my wings."

School is quickly wrapping up for the year and it could not come soon enough. I am exhausted and ready for two weeks off. I am looking forward to celebrating Budne Vecher (Christmas Eve) with my colleagues and then going to the beautiful new cathedral in Sofia on Christmas day to celebrate Mass there. I am also excited to go to Germany for a week to celebrate New Years there. But first I have to make it through two more days.

Monday started with a nice chill, we had no coal in the school. People laugh when I show them my thermal underwear, but I wear them precisely for days like this. I knew something was amiss when I walked into the teachers room in the morning and saw my breath. It was later confirmed when a colleague told me that the classes were shortened because it was so cold. So the kids wouldn’t get sick sitting in a cold classroom, they shortened the class periods from 40 minutes to 35. I’m sure we dodged the bullet on that one. I walked into my sixth grade class as they where mutinying. Some girls in the class had apparently been influenced by their 10th grade boyfriends to leave school early, and were trying to take the whole class with them. Applying two lessons I have learned over the last year and a half (ie, students will lie right to your face, even when confronted with overwhelming contrary evidence; and always, always trust your instinct) I stopped them from escaping, even when they told me that they had notes (which turned into, “well, we’ll bring in notes tomorrow” after a little questioning) and telling me they would get sick and it was all my fault.

All week I have been showing my 12th graders “It’s a Wonderful Life” during our class periods. At first my motivation for showing the movie was that I loved it and I wanted to share it with them. I thought maybe they would think it was interesting, but too old, too boring or too American. But much to my surprise they LOVE it. And they get it. We have the final installment tomorrow, but already I can tell that they are totally into it. They laugh at all the right times, they “ahhhh” at all the touching moments, and they are absolutely quiet at the really intense parts. I can’t wait to see their reaction tomorrow at the end of the movie.

What is it about that movie? What makes it so universal? Why can I, a 24 year old living in 2006, feel like a movie from 1946 was written about me? How can a group of 18 year olds in Bulgaria, feel similarly? I think the movie speaks to something deep inside of us all. We all struggle in life to do our best, and I think we all feel like we fail more than we succeed. And no matter how much people may be reluctant to talk about, I think we all worry that our life doesn’t add up to much in the end. I am reading “The Alchemist” right now and it hits a similar chord. It talks about how we are all created to fulfill our destiny, but so many of us are faint of heart and don’t follow through on our mission. I think that is true to some extent: we are all created to live for something greater than us. We are created to make this world a better place. But life beats us around and makes us think that we will never succeed, and all too often we believe it.

When he is young, George tells Mary that: “I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I'm comin' back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I'm gonna build things. I'm gonna build airfields, I'm gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm gonna build bridges a mile long...”

After a few years of being worn down by life George listens to his fears, this time in the form of Mister Potter: “Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You claimed you were going to go out and conquer the world. You once called me "a warped, frustrated, old man!" Who are you but a warped, frustrated young man, crawling in here on your hands and knees begging for help. No securities, no stocks, no bonds. Nothin' but a miserable little $500 equity in a life insurance policy. You're worth more dead than alive.”

I wish this wasn’t how life worked. I wish that we could all fulfill our destinies with ease. I wish we could go out into the world and do what really made us happy without this constant doubting. I wish when we tried and failed, that we would know that flying and crashing is better than not taking off at all. But life isn’t like that. In each day, life will test us to our limits and take away the things we want the most.

Friday is the darkest day of the year. My hope for you this Christmas season is that the light and hope that that famous birth brought will awaken in you the strength to fight back just a little longer. I hope it will light your path to your true destiny and true passion. I hope that you will remember that you are a special person and that if you had the opportunity George Bailey had, you too would run through town laughing and shouting at the top of your lungs.