Indecisiveness in Men—What Is the Cause?

The Main Decision: Can We Like the World?

George Bailey never gets to do the things he felt he wanted so much, travel and make a lot of money. And so all through the movie he doesn't really make up his mind: Has the world given him what he wanted or rooked him? Did he take care of himself by being kind to the people of Bedford Falls? Should he be grateful for his life?

A showdown occurs when, through various mishaps, the Building & Loan is about to collapse. It is Christmas eve, and at his wits end, George goes home to Mary and his four children. He is tortured, and here, Jimmy Stewart's acting is at its height—he shows George's desperation with sheerness and subtlety. I believe what he does in this scene, and often throughout the movie, is explained by what Ellen Reiss writes in The Right Of:

Decision and indecision are opposites that may torment people in their lives, but in every work of art they are one and make for beauty. They take the form of sharpness and vagueness; that which is firm and that which wavers; the definite and the tremulous.

You can see that relation of sharpness and vagueness, the firm and the wavering on Jimmy Stewart's face. One moment he is furious, the next he's shaky, ready to give up, and these things interchange with great sincerity. Stewart, as actor, didn't "decide" what the emotion should be in a way that would be two-dimensional. He lets the emotion take him, affect him—it's ephemeral, wavering, the way people really are.

George Bailey goes to the bridge, ready to throw himself into the water and end it all. But just then, a mysterious and friendly forces intervenes, and he is stopped. And as he looks at the world around him, and sees the familiar town and faces of people, he is tremendously grateful. As the film ends, we feel he sees his life has real meaning, that he's had a good effect on many people who love him for it, and that this is worth everything.

That is what Aesthetic Realism can enable people to feel on a completely logical basis. It's what Michael White felt when he wrote to us, "I'm extremely excited by the world that's opening up to me, or I should say that I'm opening up to. I feel very fortunate to be studying Aesthetic Realism, it's enabling me to see so much more than I saw before." What's the best decision anyone could make?— to study this great, kind education!

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