Experiences Into Words

Honestly to compare anyone,  including myself, to Helen Keller is extremely difficult, nearly impossible really. Of course I have not experienced what it is like to be both deaf and blind. “The Story of My Life” gave my insight on what she went through but I still do not and cannot truly understand what her experiences must have been like. Helen’s life is so out of the ordinary. Her thoughts, feelings, and emotions are very separate from my own, therefore, my imagination and attempt to put myself in her shoes is really all I can do to try to understand her experiences.
Research shows that when an individual loses one of their senses, their other senses become stronger to compensate. It was clear to me that Helen’s sense of smell was exceptionally keen. She wrote with such detail. She could take something as simple as the smell of a flower and develop the idea into something so precise and marvelous. The touch and smell of things became engraved memories in her mind.  This differs so much from the way a regular individual experiences the simple things. Often those equipped with fully functioning senses, like myself, take the little things for granted  to the point where we don’t even notice the details around us.  And even if we do take the time to appreciate a moment, such as beautiful view of the mountains, we probably will never think about that particular moment again the same way and therefore we forget that experience. We are surrounded by a world that has countless exquisite moments and things, and we often do not even take the time or effort to truly appreciate even a fraction of those.
The fact that she was not only able to have the motivation to learn objects and words, but actually learned to speak is utterly remarkable. Especially the way in which she was able to do this through touching her teachers mouth and paying especially close attention to throat vibrations. I believe she is a genius. She was able to accomplish so much because of how determined she was. It is definitely eye opening to me because I can find myself becoming overwhelmed just writing up or typing out assignments, or reading through material. But to her “Knowledge is love and light and vision”.

Internet

I would first just like to start off with how astonished I am that there are people out there that are incredibly intelligent enough to create things like computers and the internet in the first place. I can’t even imagine what thoughts must go on in their brains, thoughts I would never be able to think of or understand in a million years. But that of course is off topic, I tend to do that very often, my friend Brandon always makes fun of me for it. See there I go again! Anyway, the internet is such a vast place; it is amazing the way people can connect all over the world. Information is so easily accessible to many of us nowadays, and has been for so long that I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to not have the internet. I mean the way my grandma talks about how she had to do research in school is incredibly different from the way we are able to retrieve information now. For example, mylifesaver.

Of course, there is no such thing as perfection. There is always a flaw, always the pros and cons, ups and downs to anything. You could argue countless negative ideas about the internet. For example, there is an excessive amount of information that isn’t child friendly on the internet that kids could browse at any time. But there is also an excessive amount of information that all people, no matter what age should not see. Race and gender, although they are issues that have become less prevalent over the years, are still existing problems. The subject is sensitive for many people, and I guess that’s why it really shocks me that some people are able to say some of the stuff they do. I do not find myself a judgmental person, but clearly some people are, especially when it comes to race and gender. This is seen quite often still today, even daily for some people. For example YouTube, some people may browse it daily when they are bored (in class) – just kidding, or when having trouble falling asleep they may just go to simply look up some calm music to help them pass out. The problem is, almost every single video will have some kind of inappropriate comment on it.

My boyfriend is black, I am white. We have discussed many of the racial stereotypes, while many of them may not seem too serious, such as black people liking watermelon or chicken. I am lucky that he has a pretty easy going personality and sense of humor because some of the stuff I watch on YouTube, for example these hilarious guys, can drop some jokes that may be offensive to different races, as well as gender differences, and I don’t want to offend him. What is appropriate? Where do we draw the line? It is something I think we as society may not think about as often as we should. While anonymity is good because it can allow people to be themselves, it is bad in the way it seems to lead to many harmful statements and attacks to certain groups of people. It’s a shame.