The Year of Wandering
Goethe prefaces Wilhelm Meister's travels with some lines full of that
sagacity which was so closely related to his insight:
What shap'st thou here at the world? 't is shapen long ago;
The Maker shaped it, he thought it best even so;
Thy lot is appointed, go follow its hest;
Thy way is begun, thou must walk, and not rest;
For sorrow and care cannot alter the case;
And running, not raging, will win thee the race.
My inheritance, how wide and fair!
Time is my estate: to time I'm heir.
Between the preparation and the work, the apprenticeship and the actual
dealing with a task or an art, there comes, in the experience of many
young men, a period of uncertainty and wandering which is often
misunderstood and counted as time wasted, when it is, in fact, a period
rich in full and free development. In the days when Wilhelm Meister was
written, the _Wanderjahr_ or year of travel was a recognised part of
student life, and was held in high regard as contributing a valuable
element to a complete education. "The Europe of the Renaissance," writes
M. Wagner, "was fairly furrowed in every direction by students, who often
travelled afoot and barefoot to save their shoes." These wayfarers were
light-hearted and often empty-handed; they were in quest of knowledge, but
the intensity of the search was tempered by gaiety and ease of mood. Under
a mask of frivolity, however, youth often wears a serious face, and behind
apparent aimlessness there is often a steady and final turning of the
whole nature towards its goal.
Uncertainty breeds impatience; and in youth, before the will is firmly
seated and the goal clearly seen, impatience often manifests itself in the
relaxation of all forms of restraint. The richer the nature the greater
the reaction which sometimes sets in at this period; the more varied and
powerful the elements to be harmonised in a man's character and life, the
greater the ferment and agitation which often precede the final
discernment and acceptance of one's work. If the pressure of uncertainty
with regard to one's gifts and their uses ought to call out patience and
sympathy, so ought that experience of spiritual and intellectual agitation
which often intervenes between the training for life and the process of
actual living. This experience is a true year of wandering, and there is
nothing of which the wanderer stands in such need as the friendly hand and
the door which stands hospitably open.
It is the born drudge alone who is content to go from the school to the
office or the shop without so much as asking the elementary questions
about life. The aspiring want to know what is behind the occupation; they
must discover the spiritual necessity of work before they are ready to
bend to the inevitable yoke. Strong natures are driven by the Very
momentum of their own moral impulse to explore the world before they build
in it and unite themselves with it; the imagination must be fed with
beauty and truth before they are content to choose their task and tools.
It is often a sign of greatness in a man that he does not quickly fit into
his place or easily find his work. Let him look well at the stars before
he bends to his task; he will need to remember them when the days of toil
come, as they must come, at times, to every man. Let him see the world
with his own eyes before he gives to fortune those hostages which hold him
henceforth fast-bound in one place.
It is as natural for ardent and courageous youth to wish to know what is
in life, what it means, and what it holds for its children, as for a child
to reach for and search the things that surround and attract it. Behind
every real worker in the world is a real man, and a man has a right to
know the conditions under which he must live, and the choices of
knowledge, power, and activity which are offered him. In the education of
many men and women, therefore, there comes the year of wandering; the
experience of travelling from knowledge to knowledge and from occupation
to occupation. There are men and women, it is true, who are born under
conditions so free and prosperous that the choice of work is made almost
instinctively and unconsciously, and apprenticeship merges into mastery
without any intervening agitation or uncertainty. At long intervals Nature
not only sends a great talent into the world, but provides in advance for
its training and for its steady direction and unfolding; but Nature is not
often so minute in her provision for her children. Those who receive most
generously from her hand are, for the most part, compelled to discover
their gifts and find their places in the general order as the result of
much searching, and often of many failures.
And even in the most harmonious natures the elements of agitation and
ferment are rarely absent. The forces which go to the making of a powerful
man can rarely be adjusted and blended without some disturbance of
relations and conditions. This disturbance is sometimes injurious, because
it affects the moral foundations upon which character rests; and for this
reason the significance of the experience in its relation to development
ought to be sympathetically studied. The birth of the imagination and of
the passions, the perception of the richness of life, and the
consciousness of the possession of the power to master and use that
wealth, create a critical moment in the history of youth,--a moment richer
in possibilities of all kinds than comes at any later period. Agitation
and ferment of soul are inevitable in that wonderful moment. It is as idle
to ask youth to be calm and contented in that supreme moment as to ask the
discoverer who is catching his first glimpse of a new continent to avoid
excitement. There are times when agitation is as normal as is self-control
at other and less critical times. There are days in June when Nature seems
to betray an almost riotous prodigality of energy; but that prodigality is
always well within the limits of order. In youth that which is to be
feared is not the explosive force of vitality, but its wrong direction;
and it is at this crisis that youth so often makes its mute and unavailing
appeal to maturity. The man who has left his year of wandering behind him
forgets its joys and perils, and regards it as a deflection from a course
which is now perfectly plain, although it may once have been confused and
uncertain. He is critical and condemnatory where he ought to be
sympathetic and helpful. If he reflects and comprehends, he will hold out
the hand of fellowship; for he will understand that the year of wandering
is not a manifestation of aimlessness, but of aspiration, and that in its
ferment and uncertainty youth is often guided to and finally prepared for
its task.