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What I Am Doing 127 What I Am Doing ON THE DAY of our graduation from college the royal road of life stretches before us invitingly and we are eager to begin the journey. We fancy that no obstacle can stand before us, for youth is invincible. We rush out of the gates with fiery zeal to do something, we charge upon life like an invading army confident of victory. The beginnings of the march—how certain, glad and free they are! The world is a good deal out of joint, perhaps; but we of the trained minds, the skilled hands, the courageous hearts shall set it right. We will take up the great problems that are trying men’s souls and solve them by the simple rules we have learned in college. Have we not sat at the feet of sages and economists? We have all the necessary formulas and all that remains is to put them in practice. “Oh,” cries the cynic, “you will feel differently by-and-by when life takes you roughly by the collar and sets you some tedious, inglorious task in some out-of-theway corner of the universe. Wait and see.” But the graduate does not harken to the cynic. The myriad-handed future stretches forth bountiful palms. How wonderful it is, this world that is to be our work-shop and our temple! We shall pour our young strength into it, we shall glorify, intensify and fulfill its noble ideals. HAS AMBITIONS WHICH ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO REALIZE On the day of my graduation I, too, had dreams of large service and splendid achievement . But the avenues of usefulness open to me were not many, and even when I stood debating which I should follow I found that I had no choice in the matter. Things thrust themselves upon me, and I was glad to grasp the world somewhere, even if it was not left me to choose which end I should take. Of course, like other girls, I have still ambitions which are impossible to realize, and often incongruous and grotesque. The blind and the crippled imagine themselves performing some daring feat that requires great powers of the body and steadiness of the eye. A little crippled boy in the hospital, who had never walked, used to talk about soldiering when he grew up, and glow as he told how he would carry the banner of his regiment. I, who cannot walk alone to the road near my house, am athrill at the thought of finding the North Pole—of seeing with my own eyes, or fingers, the spot that gave me so much trouble long ago when my teachers delighted in confusing me about that debatable point. “Helen, how many “What I Am Doing” is from The Silent Worker 18, no. 2 (November 1905). 128 Helen Keller bears could climb the North Pole at once?” I promptly answered, “One large bear and one little bear, because he could hold on to the big bear’s tail.” So while I sat here at my desk writing this article, the real Helen Keller is slaying lions and tigers in the heart of darkest Africa. There is something pathetic, and at the same time natural, in the fact and the weak and the helpless dream of a life of activity. It is this boon of imagination that takes the sting out of the grim facts that confront us. We may never leave our beds, we may never have seen the light of the day; but imagination picks us up bodily and drops us upon a ship, and we feel at home on the lilting waves. But because things are not as we would wish is no reason why we should not make the best of things as they are. They are all we have to work with here. We may not realize our ideals, but we may always idealize our realities, and our ideals must be practical if we are to make a religion of them and live by them. SHE FINDS WORK ABOUT HER, AND IS NEVER IDLE As I say, I found work all about me, and since I graduated I have not been idle. It is very amusing to hear what kind people say. “Your days are so monotonous!” said a well-intentioned lady, “a succession of getting-up and lying-downs in the dark, so to speak.” “You must get very tired doing nothing,” said another; “you must miss college...

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