Taking Things For Granted

Here in the 21st century we have a very bad habit of taking a lot of things for granted that are by no means given to us for free.  This can include anything from cars to transit to even the computer that I'm using to write this post to you right now. In my opinion however, this problem is not getting any better as the younger generation is coming up, in fact, if anything the problem is getting significantly worse.  Now you may be asking yourself why it is that the thought of taking things for granted came to my mind, the answer to that dear reader is fairly straight forward, it came from reading "The Story of my Life" by Helen Keller.

Helen Keller was the type of woman that most people would feel sorry for, especially with the belief systems that were afoot over the course of her life.  I know as a person in her situation that the last thing that you want from people when you have visible issues the last thing that you want is people to pity you, granted it is better then the alternative "hospitals" during that time.  The concept of being blind AND deaf is something that most people, myself included can't even fathom, again two things that we don't even consider in our day to day life, our sense of sight and hearing.  I mean what would you do if you couldn't hear during the lectures that your prof is giving, as well as not being able to see the PowerPoint slides that are put on the projector, by our standards this would be next to impossible!  As a person with a disability i understand the concept of needing to come up with some more creative methods in order to get daily tasks done but the idea that Helen and Anne came up with in regards to the placement of her fingers on Anne's face as she spoke to say the least simply amazed me.

 
It's people like Helen that should make the general public stop and think, as I said and I can't emphasize this enough, not to pity her but out of pure amazement that she could accomplish what she did in her life.  Although the absolute basic communication skills that she acquired took so long to master, she took what it was that she had and with assistance managed to write a book so that everyone who read it could understand the hurdles that she had to overcome in order to bring this information to them.

I state again that we here in the twenty first century are lucky enough to be able to turn on our computers and even be able to write a blog post like this.  The ability to instantly fix an error that sometimes in Helen's case would take minutes, so all I ask of you dear reader is that the next time you start up your computer to make that Facebook post or take the notes from your next lecture off the projector, stop and be thankful that you live in a world that is so accessible to everyone!