Totally deaf and blind at age two, Helen Keller(1880-1968) led a life of determination and wonder. Touch, smell and taste were her only guides in a world of complete darkness and silence. Her teacher, Ann Sullivan, taught Helen how to communicate by spelling out signs into Helen's hand. Helen began to understand these signs as words. With very keen intelligence and remarkable imagination, Helen soon mastered every nuance of communication, every word, both concrete and abstract. She learned to speak by putting her hand up to Mrs. Sullivan's mouth and throat and imitating the vibrations. After spending several years at institutes for the blind, she was admitted into Radcliffe College and graduated cum laude in 1904.
Helen's world was neither empty nor cruel. She could feel the rumblings of the voice and the soft folds in her Mother's face. She felt the lips that spoke the words of great men like Alexander Bell, Mark Twain and Oliver Holmes. The touch of a hand could fill her heart. In her book "The Story of My Life" Helen Keller wrote, "I have met people so empty of joy that when I clasped their frosty fingertips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm. There are others whose hands have sunbeams in them, so that their grasp warms my heart. It may only be the clinging touch of a child's hand but there is as much potential sunshine in it for me as there is in a loving glance for others ... People who think that all sensations reach us through the eye and the ear have expressed surprise that I should notice any difference."
Dartmouth students can learn from the example of Helen Keller. She spent almost every moment of her life in college struggling with the weight of her disabilities. In many instances there were no Braille versions of her textbooks; she had to have every word spelled into her hand. She learned algebra and geometry by developing a system of bending wires and strings of beads. She had to invent for herself unique ways of learning every problem. She was fluent in German, Latin and French. She read Victor Hugo, relished Shakespeare, learned Greek and read the Bible. Through touch Helen Keller became the very ideas she read. "What I read becomes the very substance and texture of my mind." She courageously broke down infinite walls of darkness and silence, all for the sake of knowledge.
I sometimes feel that what I do or write only has a temporary meaning; I am studying for the sake of a test, not for the sake of my heart. I must remind myself that knowledge for anything but the sake of itself or for the sake of others is empty. The life of Helen Keller always helps me remember this central truth. When struggling with a statistics exam or 400 pages of reading, knowledge can pass into my mind and then quickly exit. It is not necessarily a matter of memory or even understanding; it is a matter of becoming much more than a spectator, a matter of touching knowledge, of allowing knowledge to become experience and "the very substance and texture of my mind."
Touch is our most elemental sense. The first and last sensation is touch. In the womb is the first touch; there is no sight, and (for a while) no sound, only the enveloping sensation of rich, warm, and life giving water. The only way to know if an unconscious person is alive is to touch the person, to search for feeling, for a heartbeat. All living things, from the most simple to the most complex, respond to touch. Even plants, devoid of all other senses, turn their stems and follow the warmth of the sun. The ultimate touch, a touch known by Michelangelo so well, is the touch of all creation.
If I see suffering far away, if I only hear of pain, I do not become part of that pain; I do not suffer. If I only hear and see and do not touch the gross contours, the oozing puss, the deformity of suffering in life, I am only an observer. Touch is reality. Like senseless stones feeling no real pain, we could become mere spectators of life and experience in the world of the future, a world of virtual webs, of virtual friends, of virtual love. The world becomes more surreal everyday. Genetics and medicine have almost mapped the entire code of our lives in an endless attempt to fight all disease until infinite life is achieved. Computers can already be seen in every corner of our lives; soon they may be integrated into our very minds. It is not that material progress is bad in itself; technology allowed Helen Keller to overcome many of her difficulties. It is the way individuals and society react to progress that matters. Our purpose in this future, as people with the gift of knowledge, should be to resist the urge to be mere spectators. Helen Keller created a whole self through touch alone. We must not allow the touch of reality to be numbed, imprisoned by virtual truths and flashing screens.
