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The Floating Press - Helen Keller

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21 pages

English

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Stuck in a rut? Need an attitude adjustment? This inspirational classic from American author Helen Keller is bound to fit the bill. Rendered deaf and blind by scarlet fever in her infancy in a time when the disabled were often shunned and ignored, Keller managed to learn to read, write, and speak, not in only in her native English, but in several other languages, as well. Keller regards optimism as "the faith that leads to achievement," and this treatise lays out her views on making the best of even the direst of circumstances.

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Popular psychology

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mars 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775562276
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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OPTIMISM
AN ESSAY
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HELEN KELLER

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Optimism An Essay First published in 1903 ISBN 978-1-77556-227-6 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Part I - Optimism Within Part II - Optimism Without Part III - The Practice of Optimism Endnotes
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To My Teacher
Part I - Optimism Within
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Could we choose our environment, and were desire in human undertakingssynonymous with endowment, all men would, I suppose, be optimists.Certainly most of us regard happiness as the proper end of all earthlyenterprise. The will to be happy animates alike the philosopher, theprince and the chimney-sweep. No matter how dull, or how mean, or howwise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.
It is curious to observe what different ideals of happiness peoplecherish, and in what singular places they look for this well-spring oftheir life. Many look for it in the hoarding of riches, some in thepride of power, and others in the achievements of art and literature;a few seek it in the exploration of their own minds, or in the searchfor knowledge.
Most people measure their happiness in terms of physical pleasure andmaterial possession. Could they win some visible goal which they haveset on the horizon, how happy they would be! Lacking this gift or thatcircumstance, they would be miserable. If happiness is to be someasured, I who cannot hear or see have every reason to sit in acorner with folded hands and weep. If I am happy in spite of mydeprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, sothoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life,—if, in short, I aman optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.As sinners stand up in meeting and testify to the goodness of God, soone who is called afflicted may rise up in gladness of conviction andtestify to the goodness of life.
Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the faceof all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew onlydarkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted andbeat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in theconsciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life waswithout past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "aconsummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from thefingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, andmy heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the dayof thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion ofobedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, whohas felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?
My early experience was thus a leap from bad to good. If I tried, Icould not check the momentum of my first leap out of the dark; to movebreast forward is a habit learned suddenly at that first moment ofrelease and rush into the light. With the first word I usedintelligently, I learned to live, to think, to hope. Darkness cannotshut me in again. I have had a glimpse of the shore, and can now liveby the hope of reaching it.
So my optimism is no mild and unreasoning satisfaction. A poet oncesaid I must be happy because I did not see the bare, cold present, butlived in a beautiful dream. I do live in a beautiful dream; but thatdream is the actual, the present,—not cold, but warm; not bare, butfurnished with a thousand blessings.