Seeing it All With Your Eyes Closed

I was shocked!  I was talking to a college student about his future when I quoted Helen Keller’s famous line, “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing.”  To this my young friend replied, “Who was Helen Keller?”  This is not an elementary school student or someone who has been sheltered from all information in their life; this is a college student who – to matters it even more shocking – is majoring in education.

Here is a reality that also concerns me.  Some who are reading this blog are also saying, “So, who was she?”  I am not being critical or hostile to these people.  I just find it sad that we have a generation who do not know our real history, the people who made that history or the lives of those who have gone before us.  Is this the fault of the education system or of the students?  That is a question worth looking into.

I am not going to go into a whole discourse on the values of days gone by.  My concern is not that we have changed our curriculum but that so many are missing out on the stuff that real success in life is made of.  Helen Keller faced life with more disadvantages than many of us will ever face.  Being blind, deaf and mute back in the 1800’s was a hopeless state.  But she overcame her disadvantages and turned them into real advantages.  This is a lesson all success-minded people need to understand.  There is so much to learn from the life of Helen Keller that to not even know her name is a tragedy. 

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched”, said Keller, “they must be felt with the heart.”  This is not a truth that only applies to the 1800’s but to all of us today.  It is one thing to talk of beauty and adventure when you enjoy all the senses we were created to have, but another reality when you can see beauty only with the heart.  As Helen Keller also so wisely said, “There is none so blind as those who will not see.”

I have a challenge for every success-minded person.  This challenge will improve your life, your understanding and your success.  No matter if you are young or old, have a college degree or never been to college.  We can all grow when we apply the principles of growth to our lives.  Here is the challenge: Seek our lives and works of at least five achievers in our history.  There are hundreds to choose from.  Find those who achieved success in the same field you wish to achieve in.  Read about their lives and what they had to say.  Learn from them as if they were your personal mentor.  So they are.  They have much to say and you have much to learn.

To discover how you can achieve the dream you have believed was impossible for too long, read On The Journey To Achievement by John Patrick Hickey.  You can get a signed copy for yourself and get one for a friend, by going to http://www.johnpatrickhickey.com/it-is-good-to-set-goals-better-to-achieve-then/.  Now available on Kindle, Oops! Did I Really Post That? Online Etiquette in the Digital Age by John Patrick Hickey.

© 2016 John Patrick Hickey. No part of this may be reprinted or published without permission of the author.