Gifts of true vision

“Two men look out through the same bars: one sees the mud and one the stars,” wrote Rev Frederick Langbridge, the Irish poet. In support of these words, one can conclude that a man’s true vision can either limit him or elevate him. Seeing only the mud around is limited vision resulting in restrictive living. Conversely, seeing the stars makes up, for a bountiful, true-vision, one that has powers to unleash a remarkable life.

Louis Braille saw in his life that was devoid of light after an accident that left both his eyes blind as a child, a way to perfect an alphabet for the blind. His raised dot method is a testament to the philosophy that true vision has the power to transcend all limitations to arrive at a whole new world of possibilities. The Braille alphabet, named after him, empowered the hitherto hopeless lives of tens of thousands of visually impaired persons to read through the touch of their fingers giving them a respectable education.

Ann Sullivan, became the miracle teacher in the life of Helen Keller, the first person suffering from vision and hearing impairment to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, by the true vision she natured for her pupil. Helen Keller in her autobiography, ‘The story of my life’ writes, “The most important day in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Sullivan, came to me.”

 Ann Sullivan by choosing to see the star in Helen Keller liberated her from the confines of blindness and awakened the eye of her soul, filling it with light, hope, joy and freedom, from which there was no stopping the child. She eventually became an author, political activist and lecturer and was later inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame.

No matter what the current circumstances may be, adopting the true-vision-philosophy is the smartest move that can be made in the game of life. Such a philosophy ushers in hope and happiness.

The story of the two buckets illustrates the idea. Two buckets were on their way to the well. “You look mighty sad,” said one bucket to the other. “I was just thinking about the futility of what we do,” said the sad bucket. “Time after time we go down to the well and get full, but we always come back to the well empty.” “You’ve got the wrong slant,” said the other bucket. “The way I look at it, no matter how many times we come back to the well empty, we always come away full.”

“True vision is indeed the Aladdin’s Lamp of the soul. It is the divine spark that lights the lamp of progress. It is the hand that pushes aside the curtains of night to let the sunrise in.”