What Were Helen Keller’s First Words?

On April 5, 1887, less than a month after her arrival in Tuscumbia, Anne sought to resolve the confusion her pupil was having between the nouns “mug” and “milk,” which Helen confused with the verb “drink.”

Anne took Helen to the water pump outside and put Helen’s hand under the spout. As the cool water gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other hand the word “w-a-t-e-r” first slowly, then rapidly. Suddenly, the signals had meaning in Helen’s mind. She knew that “water” meant the wonderful cool substance flowing over her hand.

Quickly, she stopped and touched the earth and demanded its letter name and by nightfall she had learned 30 words.

Helen quickly proceeded to master the alphabet, both manual and in raised print for blind readers, and gained facility in reading and writing. In Helen’s handwriting, many round letters look square, but you can easily read everything.

In 1890, when she was just 10, she expressed a desire to learn to speak; Anne took Helen to see Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Boston. Fuller gave Helen 11 lessons, after which Anne taught Helen.

Throughout her life, however, Helen remained dissatisfied with her spoken voice, which was hard to understand.

Helen’s extraordinary abilities and her teacher’s unique skills were noticed by Alexander Graham Bell and Mark Twain, two giants of American culture. Twain declared, “The two most interesting characters of the 19th century are Napoleon and Helen Keller.”

The closeness of Helen and Anne’s relationship led to accusations that Helen’s ideas were not her own. Famously, at the age of 11, Helen was accused of plagiarism. Both Bell and Twain, who were friends and supporters of Helen and Anne, flew to the defense of both pupil and teacher and mocked their detractors. Read a letter from Mark Twain to Helen lamenting “that ‘plagiarism’ farce.”

Doing less accomplishes more

When your goals are so spread out into different areas of your life, you simply do not have enough time or energy to reach them all. You halfheartedly accomplish a few, but the momentum doesn’t pick up because you’re not making real progress.

Radical reinvention shocks the system

You change your life one piece at a time. Anything less thrusts you so far from your comfort zone, you start to panic. I call this “adjustment shock.” Anything new — no matter how good — is uncomfortable until it is also familiar. That is why we have to lean into new ambitions slowly, until they become a natural part of our everyday lives.

You’ll figure out what you really care about

Despite what culture would have you believe, you’re not here to be everything. You do not have to master every single aspect of your life, and feeling pressured to even pretend that you want to is robbing you of your energy to affect change where it really matters. Get crystal clear on exactly what you want and what you care enough about — that passion will help motivate you in the months to come.

Your goals need a hint of realism

A list of huge goals that are so far off from where you are right now seems intimidating. Three goals, even if they are big ones, seems more fathomable.

You can always make adjustments

Your 2020 goals might be accomplished by March. That is a totally possible thing to have happen. It’s not that you’re only aspiring to do 3 things total this year, it’s that you’re focusing on these 3 until they are mastered, and you can be onto the next thing.

Growth is not an isolated event

When you improve one part of your life, it tends to touch everything else. When you raise your standards in one way, everything else has to rise to meet it. Growth is interesting in this way: often when we focus completely on changing one thing, we inadvertently create a ripple effect in which we are naturally motivated to change others, too.

Choosing less than a handful of goals for the new decade doesn’t mean you’re diluting your ambition. In fact, quite the opposite. You’re getting focused and crystal clear on what you want to do, and funneling your energy toward creating real, and lasting, impact.

Brianna Wiest