Today. I found this post in drafts, making me wonder if
It had been published and then withdrawn:
"Helen Keller was an author, lecturer, and crusader for the handicapped. Born physically normal in Tuscumbia, Alabama, Keller lost her sight and hearing at the age of nineteen months to an illness now believed to have been scarlet fever. Five years later, on the advice of Alexander Graham Bell, her parents applied to the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston for a teacher, and from that school hired Anne Mansfield Sullivan. Through Sullivan’s extraordinary instruction, the little girl learned to understand and communicate with the world around her. She went on to acquire an excellent education and to become an important influence on the treatment of the blind and deaf."
While re-reading the paragraph above, can you spot which fact proves most enlightening when considering how insight may serve to heighten a person's perceptive awareness?
The fact in question (coupled with my having felt mesmerized, over these past two years, by everything Ravi's bright young mind has soaked in, day after day, week upon week) suggests that by the age of 19 months, Helen's mental awareness and sweetly inquisitive nature had likely absorbed a wealth of sights and sounds so as to have stimulated her spirit to actively participate in family life, as has been true of our sunshine child, who early on began to parrot back more of our words, physical reactions, facial expressions, body language, feisty 'teasy-ness' , animal sounds and hysterical behaviors than we, who make up her doting audience, could believe as each of us marveled aloud at the charming demeanor of this small child's eagerness to fill the mental capacity of her processor by absorbing, depositing, storing and offering back everything she sees and hears while demonstrating her fledgling understanding of the world she inhabits as shown by her animated reactive responses which, rather than merely mimicking ours, had, before the age of two, begun to carve out a path of her own: I a princess. I love horses. I a ballerina. Shhh ... A 'monter' sleeping in
Annie's room. (Though everyone referred to me as Gramma Annie, Ravi didn't tack on the Gramma part until after she'd turned two) ... I remember wondering: How is it possible that this bright-minded toddler can point to one of her toy horses and pipe up with 'Appaloosa' but not say 'Gramma'? And though intuitive thought offers me insight, quite often, concerning much that mystifies many highly educated, intelligent folk when we engage in mulling over the highly complex nature of the human brain's inner life, which, being a maze, influences our decision-making process more often than we know, I must admit to humility taking center stage at times when the absence of insight offers me not a clue as to what makes my loved ones tick, and when my think tank feels utterly mystified, my voice is rendered speechless until my processor can string together a series of words that makes sense, if not to anyone else, at least to me ...
Below, let's consider several snapshots of Ravi (I have at least 3,000 stored within my computer's memory bank—uh—hard drive), each showing the natural eagerness with which an adorable toddler's bright mind experiences moments of family life between the ages of one and two, starting with Papa's 74th birthday, last year, and ending with Papa's 75th birthday, several months ago. In addition to participating in a spirited game of hide and seek before she was two, Ravi exhibited as much delight in hugging, kissing, tickling, teasing and cuddling up with her adoring family as we adore hugging, kissing, tickling, teasing and cuddling with her. Over these past two years, this bright, lovable child, whose intelligence has been readily absorbing a fledgling awareness of need to tether natural demonstrations of frustration (I berry mad!) by asking for 'help peeze', Ravi has, without question, chosen to activate her membership in our family's mutual admiration society. And when anything scares or displeases her, she runs to us for safety ...
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