Unit-2 Text-2 Three Days to See-Helen Adams Keller

Unit-2

THREE DAYS TO SEE

                                 -Helen Keller

Helen Keller became totally blind and deaf at the age of nineteen months following an illness. Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy, her teacher in her childhood, opened the outer world to her and made her life worth living.

Though deprived of the light of the world and the gift and blessings of sight, Helen Keller had the awareness of the pleasures and beauty of the world. Her heart longed to see all things. After all, if one had determination and a sense of purpose, closed doors would open. She knew how to see her sight. She would urge people blessed with sight to awaken their inactive and lazy faculties. If she were given three days to sight, she would illustrate how she would make use of her eyes.

On the first day of sight, Helen Keller would see all the people and her teacher who made her life worth living with kindness, gentleness and companionship. Thus, she expressed her gratitude to all those who helped her. After all, ingratitude is the greatest sin.

Helen Keller was a voracious reader and had a number of books read to her by others. She treated these books as a great shining lighthouse that revealed to her human life and human spirit. In fact, Helen Keller was an intense human being with concern and compassion for the poor and the underdog. She would like to see the patient horses ploughing in the field and living close to the soil and toiling in the city. Helen Keller would like to visit slims, factories, parks where children played and foreign quarters to see sights of happiness and misery and understand how people worked and lived. She knew that happiness and misery were part of life. To close her eyes on them was like closing the eyes on the heart and the mind. So, she always kept her eyes open wide. She was also conscious of comedy in the human spirit. That was the reason why she wanted to see funny plays in the theater.

Helen Keller would urge all those who had eyes to see things with a sense of urgency so that whatever they saw would become dear to them. Then a new world of beauty would open itself before them.

Since a thing of beauty is joy forever, Helen Keller, with an aesthetic sense, would like to go to the New York Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to witness the progress of man in the material aspects of the world and the various aspects of human spirit respectively. She was a lover of art which had a meaning for her. She would probe into the soul of man through his art.

Blindness and deafness were by no means matters of disadvantage to Helen Keller. She was courageous, dynamic, imaginative and intelligent. She exploited her short comings and turned them into her best gifts through which she mastered life and the world. She proved that she was greater than those that had sight and hearing. In short, she conquered the world. She stood like a rock and weathered the storm. She was by no means a pessimist and a fatalist, but an optimist. Though outwardly blind, Helen Keller developed an inner vision of life. What is more, she used her talents for the good of others. When she saw smiles, she was happy. When she saw serious determination, she was proud. When she saw suffering, she was compassionate. A lone and blind woman, she set an example to others and gave hope to the hopeless. She was a humanist.