Inspiring lives: Hellen Keller

Welcome and thank you for coming to read this page !

My name is Marcelo, Forum Supporter in the P&G SubCommunity, and new to this Forum.

I will be writing here every two weeks about historical people that I find exceptional sources of inspiration and motivation because of the lives they lived, and the thoughts they expressed. They came from all walks of life, but what they did, and what they said, have something to teach us.

Today, I will start by telling a brief biography and some thoughts of Hellen Keller.

Hellen Keller

“The greatest woman of our age.” —Winston Churchill

“Helen Keller is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare, and the rest of the immortals. . . . She will be as famous a thousand years from now as she is today.” —Mark Twain

Helen Keller was born in 1880, in Alabama, USA. Her father was editor of the local newspaper; her mother was an educated young woman.

When Helen Keller was 19 months old, she was afflicted by an unknown illness, possibly scarlet fever or meningitis, which left her deaf and blind. She also became mute due to her deafness.

Helen was extremely intelligent and tried to understand her surroundings through touch, smell and taste. However, she began to realize that her family members spoke to one another with their mouths instead of using signs as she did.

Feeling their moving lips, she flew into a rage when she was unable to join in the conversation. By the age of six, Keller later wrote in her autobiography, “the need of some means of communication became so urgent that these outbursts occurred daily, sometimes hourly.”

A most amazing event occurred in 1886, when Hellen traveled with their parents to Washington, and met no other than the inventor of the telephone and the phonograph Alexander Graham Bell. Being owner of the phone monopoly in the US, he was one of the richest men in the world

But Bell was also a philanthropist (like a Bill Gates of the late XIX century). devoted to helping the deaf. Hellen wrote in his biography "My Life" (which she dedicated to him) that as soon as she met him she "loved him at once."

Bell contacted the Perkins School for the Blind, the leading institution on this subject, and asked its director to send the best possible teacher to live with Helle, and teach her full-time.

The next year, 20-year old Anne Sullivan came to Hellen's home. In Hellen's words "The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it connects."

However, Hellen had developed a tough, rebellious character, and the first weeks of the relationship. Keller hit, pinched and kicked her teacher and knocked out one of her teeth. Sullivan finally decided they both had to move and live in a small cottage next to Helen's house, and have their classes there. Through patience and firm consistency, she finally won the child’s heart and trust, a necessary step before Keller's education could proceed.

Sullivan started by fingerspelling the names of familiar objects into Hellen’s hands.

Anne began her task of teaching Helen by manually signing into the child's hand. Anne had brought a doll that the children at Perkins had made for her to take to Helen. By spelling "d-o-l-l" into the child's hand, she hoped to teach her to connect objects with letters.

Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly and in the correct order, but did not know she was spelling a word, or even that words existed. In the days that followed, she learned to spell a great many more words in this uncomprehending way.

She incorporated Keller’s favorite activities and her love of the natural world into the lessons. Keller enjoyed this “finger play,” but she didn't understand until Sullivan spelled “w-a-t-e-r” while pumping water over her hand. Keller later wrote:

"Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! …Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life."

The days that followed, “I did nothing but explore with my hands and learn the name of every object that I touched; and the more I handled things and learned their names and uses, the more joyous and confident grew my sense of kinship with the rest of the world.”

A year later, in 1888, Sullivan brought Keller to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston. For the first time, Hellen developed an extensive and meaningful social life: “I joined the little blind children in their work and play, and talked continually. I was delighted to find that nearly all of my new friends could spell with their fingers. Oh, what happiness! To talk freely with other children! To feel at home in the great world!”

Since then, she came to spend every winter at Perkins.

There, Keller studied French, arithmetic, geography and other subjects. She especially enjoyed the tactile museum’s collection of bird and animal specimens.

Throughout her life, Keller devoted her energies to humanitarian pursuits, advocating for economic justice and the rights of women and of people with disabilities. She asserted her right “to feel at home in the great world” and through her eloquence and tireless activism, she fought for the same right on behalf of all people.

She entered Radcliffe College at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1900 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in 1904, the first deaf and blind person to do so.

In 1903, her autobiography, "The Story of My Life", was published. This book has been translated into 50 languages and remains in print to this day. Millions of copies have been sold all over the world, inspiring millions of people.

She wrote several more books, all of which became bestsellers, in particular "Optimism" (1903).

She traveled to twenty-five different countries giving motivational speeches (through an interpreter) in favor of people with disabilities. She promoted women's right to vote, was a pacifist, and an ardent activist for social justice and the dignity and rights of the poor (this even brought her under the scrutiny of the FBI).

She also co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union with other American civil rights activists in 1920, against racial segregation, and other constitutional rights issues.

She had a very active life as writer, speaker and activist until 1961, when her health declined. She died peacefully in 1968.

Some wise reflections by Hellen Keller taken from her books and speeches:

"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

“What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.”

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”

"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."

"Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle."

"We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world."

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

"Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world."

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold."

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.”

"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose."

"Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye."

"When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don’t see the one that has opened for us."

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow."

"The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.""No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it."

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart."

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.""

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."

Hellen Keller, Anne Sullivan, and Alexander Graham Bell.