Mark Twain, Helen Keller, and the River of Life…

https://otpotential.com/blog/2015/8/25/occupational-therapy-quotes

Did you know that Mark Twain, author of Tom  Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn, was one of the first advocates for disability rights in America? 

He was.

Mark Twain is a personal hero of mine. I read his books as a boy, and his skillful observations about people and willingness to get himself into trouble on behalf of disabled folks has inspired me in my adult life.  If Mark Twain and I were sitting across from one another and looking into each others eyes, I’m pretty sure it would be clear to both of us who was a tougher, and smarter human being - Him! 

( I’m not ashamed!)

One of the ways Mark Twain supported folks with disabilities was through his friendship with another bright light in our history, Helen Keller. Mark  became friends with Helen, in 1895, when Helen was 14 years old. 

If you don’t know Helen’s story, here’s a little introduction.

Helen Keller was born in Alabama, in 1880. When she was 19 months old, she contracted an infection, most likely meningitis or scarlet fever, and it left her blind, and deaf. What this meant to Helen was that although she had a young child’s memory of sounds, and sight, she could no longer see or hear, and she had not yet learned to speak. Helen was fortunate that she was able to receive training and support from a woman named Anne Sullivan, who became her companion. Since blindness and deafness had taken those senses from Helen,  Anne creatively taught her to speak by writing in Helen’s hand, running water over her other hand, until Helen began to sense that she could use her mouth and tongue to make words. Listen to how Helen described this in her autobiography:

Helen’s “breakthrough in communication came the next month when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on the palm of her hand, while running cool water over her other hand, symbolized the idea of "water". Writing in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, Keller recalled the moment: "I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten — a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. The living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, set it free!

https://daily.jstor.org/historys-odd-couple-mark-twain-helen-keller/

Mark Twain met Helen Keller at a meal given in her honor by a friend of hers.  Twain was so taken by Helen’s courage and humanity that he began to travel with her and spoke to gatherings of people about their friendship and his admiration for her.

He also introduced Helen to Standard Oil multi-millionaire Henry Huttleston Rogers to finance her education at Harvard. Mark referred to her as the 8th wonder of the world! Helen became the first blind and deaf person to receive a Bachelors degree from Harvard university. 

Throughout her life, Helen continued to develop her sensitivity in touch, sensing the vibration of music, and conversing with others by lightly touching their mouth. 

She also remained friends with Twain for the rest of his life. In his last year, Helen spent three days with Twain, talking and walking around his Connecticut home. Of those three days she said;

 “I have been in Eden three days and I saw a King. I knew he was a King the minute I touched him though I had never touched a King before.”

Helen Later wrote, "He treated me like a competent human being. That’s why I loved him.”

To me, Helen Keller’s life is a beautiful example of how ‘The River of Life flows through us, except when it doesn’t”. When Helen was born she had a fully functioning brain, as far as we know. After the infection at nineteen months, light and sound no longer could be perceived.  She lost so much of what most of us can take for granted, yet with the help of her friend Anne Sullivan ( also known as The Miracle Worker) she was able to bring clarifying words, sensitivity, awareness, kindness and compassion to herself and others. 

Both Mark Twain and Helen Keller can be seen as models for those of us who are parents of special 

needs children. Like Mark, we can all be strong advocates for every child with a disability, beginning with our own, and like Helen, we can all ripen our sensitivity, feelings, and ability to share our Family Grit with the world. 

(Mark Twain dancing with Helen Keller, 1909)

Questions: 

1. How’s your own River of Life doing? Are you getting adequate sleep? Regularly doing a form of exercise you enjoy? 

2. If you could sit down with Mark Twain or Helen Keller, what would you want to learn from them in a conversation? 

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

- Joseph Campbell

I’ve been inspired by this quote for Joseph Campbell for many years, and thought deeply about what it is to be who I am. Not a simple question to respond to. A lot of wise women and men have spent much of their lives struggling to answer this question with authenticity. 

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Neal Mayerson in Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Mayerson is a psychologist and musician who has been deeply involved in the emerging science of Positive Psychology. It would be fair to say that Positive Psychology would not exist in its current form without the support of Neal Mayerson. 

During our conversation we were talking about character strengths. Our character strengths are human qualities that we can all develop to make our lives more resilient, engaged, and meaningful. For example, If we find ourselves in situation of constant stress, where our fight or flight response is constantly firing and making us feel exhausted, we can utilize Positive Psychology to bolster our sense of bravery. This is a really important feature of how our brains work - we can improve many of our character strengths with skillful practice and mentoring. 
As our conversation went a bit deeper, we spoke about an important distinction in the Positive Psychology science, the distinction between a character strength and a signature strength. We all have 24 known character strengths that can be identified, studied, and measured. They include Prudence, Optimism, Persistence, and Creativity (and 20 others). Signature Strengths are a different degree of character strength. We each have 5or 6 character strengths that really stand out for us, that we have learned throughout our lives to do well. These are called our Signature Strengths. Signature strengths are our qualities of character that, when we are in contact with them we think or say ‘THIS is who I am!’ 

So Positive Psychology has given us a partial answer to the question ‘Who am I’?  The answer is, ‘ I’m someone who is Creative, Brave, Persistent, Optimistic, and Empathetic’, or whatever your top 5 character strengths are.

I think this is a really big deal, to be able to identify our core positive strengths, and begin to strengthen them.

What do you think? If you’d like to take the free test and find out what your top five character strengths are, follow this link:  https://www.viacharacter.org/

When you finish taking the test, be sure to take a few minutes to reflect on how well these character strengths fit you. Could you make your life more resilient by focusing your attention on these qualities and strengthening them?

Guess what? The science of Positive Psychology says you can!

Have fun taking the VIA Character Strengths Test!

Dr. Mike
Special Needs Dad, Chiropractor, Servant Leader

When you feel yourself falling... dive!

When you feel yourself falling... dive!
- Joseph Campbell

I remember when I was about 5 years old and I wanted to learn how to skip. It looked pretty easy to me, so with a five year olds enthusiasm I went clumsily half-hopping, half stumbling down the road in Centerville Ohio, where my family lived when I was young. There was no sidewalk, and pretty soon I was feeling pretty good about my ability , so I started skipping up onto a few of our neighbors yards. I felt like I was flying when I built up speed, and at one point I clipped my foot on a tree root. I went airborne and I remember spinning out of control as gravity made it’s claim on my bones. As I was falling, I tried to figure out how to not get hurt. Of course, I didn’t have a lot of time to figure this out, since I was about to kiss the dirt! I reached to try and grab a part of the tree. This was an error. Unfortunately for me, I was able to grab a small protrusion where a branch had once been, called a knot. As a result, I whipped around the tree and scraped my arm ‘real good’, and hit my chest pretty hard on the tree. I landed hard on the ground anyway when I let go of the knot.

This was a good early lesson for me to reflect back on. I didn't understand it then, so I’m not presenting myself as someone who learned great lessons from the trees as a young boy! But as an adult, there’s fruit for me in the recollection. The fruit is that I can reflect on the experience and tell a story about it, and use the challenge it presented me with to help me figure out how to respond to difficult situations I put myself into or that life brings to me. 

Let’s take a look at the quote above from Joseph Campbell. ‘ When you feel yourself falling …. dive!’

That’s not always a great idea. We can all respond to most of ‘our daily dose of suffering’ (as Dr. Fred Luskin call’s it) and the many stresses we face with resilience, and often cheerfulness. I don’t think Joseph is talking about that kind of falling. Joseph is talking about the BIG FALLS. The falls we can’t control, like the death of a loved one, or the long term care of a family member with a disability. The daily stresses and falls, even when they are very challenging can usually be dealt with. In fact, we have a lot of scientific data that shows that we actually do a lot better in life when we embrace stress and use it to make significant choices in our lives. 

BIG FALLS are a different animal. When one of the big falls comes knocking at our door (and we all get those visits occasionally), we may not have the inner resources to deal with it. Sometimes, no matter how much character strength we have, the hunting dogs have our scent. When this happens, it’s time to DIVE!

Dive where? Towards what source of help? Here’s what Campbell meant - dive into your deep inner resources, further into your character than you’ve been before. IN the words of Myth and Legends, you go through the Wasteland you find yourself in, and towards the Holy Grail of a deeper, more authentic and resilient version of yourself. 

When we are in a situation that calls for a DIVE, rather than the hard work of being an adult who faces challenges, a good thing to remember is that a quick fix is not likely. An intense period of suffering may be coming. This is not a punishment or a reflection of your worth as a human being. This is life, and life is difficult.

Diving when we know we are entering a situation we won’t be able to control is an important skill to have. It’s related to knowing our limitations, and getting the help we need.

Falling into a tree certainly doesn’t qualify as a situation requiring a dive into interior resources of character. It was a simple lesson for me as a boy - just land on the soft grass. But I think the metaphor can help us. In my attempt to avoid falling, I injured myself worse than if I would have just taken the dive. 

In case you’re currently in a DIVE! situation, here’s a brief Native American story. 

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm. Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”
― Joseph Campbell

Here are a couple of self reflection questions for you.

1. When faced with extremely challenging situations, do you tend to struggle to hold on to how things are? Or do you tend to dive deep and look for new resources in yourself? hint - Neither answer is better, sometimes we ought to hold on, sometimes we’d be better off diving.

2. Think of a time you were faced with a challenge you were sure would overwhelm you. How did you respond?

Happy Diving!
Dr. Mike
Special Needs Dad, Chiropractor, Servant Leader

Know you’re limitations, and getting the help you need.

I was a very young man when I first began studying the great mythologist and storyteller Joseph Campbell. I first saw him on a television series with Bill Moyer called ‘The Power of Myth’. This was in 1988, and Joseph had become popular because he had written a book called ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ many years before (1949) and movie director George Lucas had credited that book as the basis for the ‘Star Wars’ story. The story structure that Joseph Campbell had uncovered for us can be fund worldwide in all cultures. That story structure is called ‘The Hero’s Journey’.

The Hero’s Journey is the path that each of us takes through life, and often we have the opportunity for many such journeys. In our Family Grit training programs, both the on-line course and in our workshops, we utilize the Hero’s Journey pattern to flesh out the uniqueness of our own life’s journey from early life to adulthood, and from harsh challenges to finding the signature strengths that define our best, most authentic selves.

On my own journey, around the same time I had come into contact with a man who become an important mentor in my life, Dr. Robert Moore. Dr. Moore is a Jungian psychologist and professor of psychology in Chicago, just south of where I live in Wisconsin. I was young, and eager to make myself into someone who could serve the greater good, and I told this to Dr. Moore. This was a lucky encounter for me, with a man of great depth and maturity.

He listened carefully and at the end of our conversation he said ‘ Mike, I want you to remember two things’. I agreed. He went on to say ‘First, you’ve got to know your limitations’. I let that sink in a moment, and Dr. Moore waited patiently as I thought it through. Of course, I remembered the Clint Eastwood line from one of the ‘Dirty Harry’ movies, but I understood that Dr. Moore wanted me to comprehend something. He wanted me to get a feel for human limits. Dr. Moore went on to say, ‘ and second, get the help you need’. 

These two bits of wisdom, know your limitations, and get the help you need, became cornerstones for me in my life. We explore the ‘Limit Questions’ thoughtfully in both the Family Grit on-line training and in our workshops. For now, take a moment of self reflection for yourself. Breathe. Consider the following questions...

1. In your best estimation, how many more years do you expect to live? How do you intend to live them?

2. How much time do you spend each day on your most valued relationships? Do you want to make any adjustments to how you allocate your precious time?

I hope these (seemingly) simple thoughts help you restore or maintain your resilience and live your own Hero’s Journey with bravery, joy, and self compassion.

Dr. Mike
Special Needs Dad, Chiropractor, Servant Leader