It's a wonderful life?

I saw "It's a Wonderful Life" for the first time tonight. It was a very good movie, but the lesson that I got out of it was "give up your dreams and settle for what you've got." My mother seems to think I have a very "interesting" take on the movie, and it appears that she finds something wrong with my assessment. I don't understand why I'm so wrong.

Sure, the world where he was never born was worse off than the one where he lived, of that there's no question. But what about the life where he follows his dreams? Where was that? And I don't buy the argument that in the end he realized his dreams were not to travel and get out of his home town, but to help people and have a family. That's not his DREAM. That's the reality he has to cope with.

Now, I'm glad he did what he did. Clearly he helped a lot of people and he made people's lives better, richer, and happier. And that's not something to be taken lightly. But where's the progress?

Is he any better off at the end of the movie? No. He's not going to jail - that's good. But the mean old man still has his money. And the mean old man didn't change. And his friends have bailed him out of trouble, but he's still not seen the world. He's still in the house he swore he'd never live in. Still working the job he never wanted for the company he never wanted. Still married, like he swore he'd never be, though it probably would have happened anyway. So what's changed? Well... He's just realized that complaining isn't going to make things any better, and he ought to enjoy what he has.

I think that was his big fault. If you're going to give up everything you want, you should damn well get all the joy you can out of what you've got left. So he learned that much. But I still don't know if I'd call it a happy ending.