Chapter Five: The Social Activist

 Chapter 5

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”

John Muir

The Social Activist

Ernest Masters(1984)

    Ernest rested on a Swiss mountainside while on hire, tending a local farmer’s flock of approximately 500 sheep.  As a former medical student, he knew of no better way to escape his fast-paced, high-pressure life in his home city of Basel and to live what he considered a near off-the-grid existence, close to nature and more in line with his deep-rooted Taoist/Buddhist beliefs.  These same beliefs caused him to rebel and refuse the mandatory Swiss military service that earned him a six-month prison sentence, to the great shame of his upper-middle-class family. 

    Ernest felt suffocated with his middle-class lifestyle, the direction his life was taking, and the choices he had made under family pressure.  He questioned the idea of even becoming a medical doctor.  Ernest, instead of feeling he had a future life in his homeland with his chosen profession, only felt an overwhelming emptiness as if some void needed to be filled, but he wasn’t really certain of how and why at age 23, he was a lost soul looking for, as the cliche goes, meaning and direction in life.  He had dropped out of medical school to the horror of his rigid father, who saw this as an affront to the family's dignity and traditions.  Ernest's father was a successful economist with a flourishing career at the prestigious University of Basil.  He had the whole package of wealth and status. This was true of his father before him. Ernest was now the weak link in the family legacy chain.

    The final conversation with his father, on these topics, did not go well, making Ernest’s inevitable departure all the more difficult and emotionally painful. 

    The rain was coming down in fine, silver needles outside the Master’s home.  The scent from the gardens and wet earth drifted faintly through the half-opened window in Otto Master’s study, mingled with the sharp pungent odour of pipe smoke. Ernest’s father sat stiffly, looking awkward and uncomfortable behind his mahogany desk, hands clasped firmly, eyes fixed on the wall clock as if waiting for it to deliver a verdict. Across from him, his son, Ernest, stood in the doorway, not committed to entering the room, coat half buttoned, eyes restless, as if even the air in the room was plotting to suffocate him by closing in around him.

    “You can’t possibly be serious about this, Ernest.  You’re throwing away three years of the best medical training in Switzerland.  For what?  To wander aimlessly.”

    “To breathe, Father.  To see the world before it hardens me into something I won’t recognize any more. It’s about being true to myself !”  Ernest said in exasperation.

    “True to yourself, that doesn’t even make sense.  Can you even listen to yourself talk?  This is your life, Ernest. Wake up before it is too late, and you do something you truly regret.”  Otto’s jaw tightened as he spoke these words.  He had seen this coming in his son, the quiet defiance, the distracted eyes during family dinners, the way Ernest would linger by the window and drift out of conversations while others spoke of internships.  He added, “Son, you speak as if duty were a prison.  Medicine is the most honourable profession.  It gives life true meaning.  It can give you meaning.”

    “Meaning for whom?  For you?  If my mother were still here, she would be pushing me to marry some banker’s daughter and spend my life listening to the complaints of the comfortable?  You call that meaning? I call that the ultimate surrender. You aren’t any better.”

    A muscle twitched beneath Otto’s temple. “Don’t you dare invoke the memory of your mother in these discussions.  Your mother only wanted the best for you and this family.  If you valued, no, if you loved, your mother, you would change this insane course you have set yourself on.  You are only twenty-three.  You have no idea what surrender means.  The world is not one of your poems, Ernest.  It is a serious set of obligations.  Men who forget that end up broken, or worse, forgotten.”

    Ernest’s gaze wandered to the window.  Beyond the rain, the Rhine shimmered like a dull blade.  He imagined following it, letting it lead him through forests and mountains, to places where no one cared about the respectability of rank.  “When I was a child, you used to take me walking in the hills.  I remember how quiet and introspective you became when the city fell further behind us.  If you remember that time, you can understand what I feel now.  There is more to life than climbing ladders built by other men.”

    For a moment, Otto’s eyes softened.  But quickly his old rigidity returned, the armour of habit and expectations.  “That was before I learned that dreams don’t pay bills.  You think you can live on air and idealism? The world will crush that kind of naïveté.”

    “Then let it try.”

    Silence filled the room, thick as the rain outside.  The clock ticked between them like a slow heartbeat.  Otto rose from his chair.  “All I can say is that you will regret this decision.  Ernest, a man without a profession, is a man without a future.”

    Ernest took a step toward the door, his voice quiet but steady.  “No, father. A man without freedom has no future.  I’d rather be lost for a while than live someone else’s map.”  He left his father standing in the dim light of the study, the rain still whispering on the glass panes.

    And for the first time, Otto Masters wondered whether the emptiness he feared for his son wasn’t already his own.