There was a little girl who was dealt a bad hand in life. When she was one and a half years old, a childhood illness took away her sight and hearing. The poor girl was trapped inside her mind. She hadn't learned to speak, so she uttered gibberish and animal-like sounds. She always went into unprovoked fits of rage, smashing dishes and physically attacking anyone in the room with her. Many doctors diagnosed her as mentally ill. They recommended putting her into an asylum for the rest of her life. But, thankfully, her parents refused.
When she was 7, the family hired a young woman to tutor her. For weeks the tutor tried to communicate with her by spelling words into her hand. She could feel the tutor's fingers on her palm, but the symbols or gestures didn't have any meaning to her. She was still trapped... Then one day, she was holding a cup under a gusting water spout. The tutor kept spelling the word W-A-T-E-R into her hand. Suddenly, the little girl understood the letters represented an object! In that flash of recognition, the door to the world flew wide open for her. She ran around the room, grabbing objects at random, begging the tutor to spell the name into her palm. As a grown-up girl years later, she wrote, "Spark after spark of meaning flew from hand to hand." That day and beyond, she was free and no longer trapped inside her mind. She became a voracious learner!
The rest, as any good story has to end, is history. Her name is Helen Keller and her amazing tutor is Anne Sullivan (read Keller's The Story of My Life). Like Keller's breakthrough, reading can help us to break out from our mental prison. Reading - and writing too - has the power to transform us by connecting the dots of information, imagination, and possibilities. At times when we felt trapped inside our minds, unable to understand or express our thoughts and feelings, reading and writing are great ways to a breakthrough. Victor Hugo once said: "To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark" ✨
#ServeToLead #ReadersAreReaders #FreeYourMind #ThePowerOfReading #HelenKeller #AnneSullivan #Breakthrough #LetsMakeReadingCoolAgain
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