Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast, the beauty of truth and love and goodness
– Helen Keller
Who was Helen Keller?
For those of you who don’t know, “Helen Keller was an American author and educator who was blind and deaf. Her education and training represent an extraordinary accomplishment in the education of persons with these disabilities.”
At least that’s what Wikipedia says when you search “who was Helen Keller and why was she important.”
Naturally, that blurb hardly begins to express the true depth of character and breadth of impact that she had on this world. This is characteristic of most biographies about excellent people, try as they might, they fail to encompass the import of that person.
In this article, I wish to explore an essay she wrote in 1903 entitled, Optimism.
Optimism Through Her eyes
If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life,—if, in short, I[13] am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
– Helen Keller
You’d be hard pressed to find a person with more claim to complain than a woman who had been blind, deaf, and mute since 19 months of age, yet here Helen Keller is at age 23 stating that her “Happiness is so deep that it is a faith.”
Given the challenges she faced and the ability to be happy in spite of those challenges, she is someone who it would be wise to look to for advice on optimism It would be proper to say that her optimism was informed by her experiences rather than an ignorant and foolishly blissful optimism based upon fallacious reasoning that many think of when they hear the aforementioned word.
It would be proper to say that her Optimism was informed by her experiences rather than an ignorant Optimism that many think of when they hear the aforementioned word.
You Must Know Evil to Become Informed
A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.
– Helen Keller
It’s incredibly easy to go around spouting off positive quotes and idealist phrases when things are going the way you anticipate that they should, but I challenge anyone to try being Pollyanna when they just found out their brother died in a car crash or that their mother cancer. You might say “jeez man, that took a dark turn” but events like this aren’t uncommon.
Approximately 39.5% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes according to cancer.gov.
1.92 people die each second on this planet. Relative to the amount of people on earth, that number is miniscule, but imagine that you or a loved one truly could have been one of those two that died this very second.
Puts things in perspective, right? It’s not that unlikely that one of these days, you will be faced with a challenge, you will become “acquainted with sorrow.” What then?
You will either overcome that challenge (whatever overcoming means to you) or you won’t. Either way, whatever happened has already taken place and the only thing left to control is what you do afterwards. This falls on you. The control is in your hands. Psychologically it is important that we, as humans, believe we are in control. The thing is, even if we cannot control external circumstances, we can still control our mental states and in a strange sense the mind is it’s own vast cosmos… so cool beans, you kind of control a world.
After the Acquaintance
I can say with conviction that the struggle which evil necessitates is one of the greatest blessings. It makes us strong, patient, helpful men and women. It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
– Helen Keller
Experiences in life are relatively good or bad based on the other experiences we’ve had. Our past forms the basis for how we categorize an event. Eating a donut may be an absolutely transcendent experience to someone who has never had one. However, if somebody is on their 8th donut out of the twelve they decided to eat for lunch, the experience is probably pretty “meh.”
In a similar manner as the person eating eight donuts, after a brush with darkness, a person has added depth to their conception of evil. Now they have a greater frame of reference between good and bad. Waiting in line at Starbucks is no longer an 8 out of 10 on the annoyance scale because they experienced some scenario which completely forced them to redefine the scale of bad and good.
Moreover, good events seem far better when compared to whatever depth of hell that person has overcome.
To what is good I open the doors of my being, and jealously shut them against what is bad. Such is the force of this beautiful and wilful conviction, it carries itself in the face of all opposition.
I am never discouraged by absence of good. I never can be argued into hopelessness. Doubt and mistrust are the mere panic of timid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer, and the large mind transcend.
– Helen Keller
It is through cooperation with the good that we prevail. Like many wise people have said in the past, we don’t overcome hardship by avoiding the bad. Hardships are overcome through embracing the struggle. This idea has been stated in various forms time and time again. Wherever there is suffering, there are wise people who have made an acquaintance with it and have transcended. This should be something to put faith in. Maybe you’ll be able to overcome whatever struggle might befall you just as your precursors were able to.
In Closing
My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.
– Helen Keller
Place your faith in something deeper than cursory and fleeting emotions. It may be fallacious to assert that just because this mindset has worked for people in the past, it will work for you, but it is not fallacious to argue that this has worked for people to overcome hardship, and there exists a likelihood that it may serve you to adopt this way of thinking… this enduring, informed optimism.