晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 72 The Year of Wandering

[00:00.98]Passage 72 The Year of Wandering

[00:06.12]Between the preparation and the work,

[00:09.51]the apprenticeship and the actual dealing with a task or an art,

[00:14.66]there comes, in the experience of many young men,

[00:18.71]a period of uncertainty and wandering which is often misunderstood and counted as time wasted,

[00:27.46]when it is, in fact, a period rich in full and free development.

[00:33.37]It is as natural for ardent and courageous youth to wish to know what is in life,

[00:41.03]what it means, and what it holds for its children,

[00:44.75]as for a child to reach for and search the things that surround and attract it.

[00:51.42]Behind every real worker in the world is a real man,

[00:56.78]and a man has a right to know the conditions under which he must live,

[01:02.80]and the choices of knowledge, power, and activity which are offered him.

[01:08.71]In the education of many men and women, therefore, there comes the year of wandering;

[01:16.48]the experience of traveling from knowledge to knowledge and from occupation to occupation.

[01:23.69]The forces which go to the making of a powerful man can rarely be adjusted and blended

[01:31.69]without some disturbance of relations and conditions.

[01:36.06]This disturbance is sometimes injurious,

[01:40.44]because it affects the moral foundations upon which character rests;

[01:45.69]and for this reason the significance of the experience in its relation to development

[01:53.13]ought to be sympathetically studied.

[01:56.41]The birth of the imagination and of the passions, the perception of the richness of life,

[02:04.07]and the consciousness of the possession of the power to master and use that wealth,

[02:11.84]create a critical moment in the history of youth,

[02:16.10]—a moment richer in possibilities of all kinds than comes at any later period.

[02:23.44]Agitation and ferment of soul are inevitable in that wonderful moment.

[02:30.11]There are times when agitation is as normal as is self-control at other and less critical times.

[02:38.75]The year of wandering is not a manifestation of aimlessness, but of aspiration,

[02:46.52]and that in its ferment and uncertainty youth is often guided to

[02:52.54]and finally prepared for its task.