Three Days to See

Think of a trip you enjoyed, say a zoo. What did you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Touch? Would it be different if you couldn't see or hear? The third text in Unit 1 is by Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf: 'Three Days to See'.

She starts with what she can do: "I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch." She feels the even shape (symmetry) of a leaf, the smooth skin of a silver birch tree, the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring she touches branches hoping to find a bud, the first sign of Nature waking after winter. Sometimes she puts her hand on a small tree and feels the happy quiver of a bird singing!

Then her big question: "If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight!" So she imagines what she'd most like to see if she had her eyes for just three days.

Day 1: the people whose kindness and friendship have made her life worth living. She has never looked into a friend's heart through "that window of the soul, the eye". (Our eyes show if we're happy, sad or angry.) She can only 'see' the outline of a face through her fingertips.

Day 2: rise with the dawn and watch the 'thrilling miracle' of night turning into day. Then visit the museums to see the story of human progress: the history of the earth, of animals and of people, and the huge skeletons of dinosaurs and mastodons that lived before humans.

Day 3: the everyday city, with people busy at work. At a busy corner, just watching people: "I see smiles, and I am happy. I see serious determination, and I am proud. I see suffering, and I am compassionate (I feel for them)."

At midnight, her darkness would come back, and only then would she realise how much she'd left unseen. Her advice to all of us who can see: "Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind." Hear as if you'd be deaf tomorrow; touch, smell and taste the same way. Make the most of every sense!