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TheTandD.com | Count our blessings thankfully
I am sure we all have stories to tell about our losses and sufferings. However, these experiences are inevitably bound with the territory called life. Therefore, instead of looking before and after and pining for what is not, we need to learn how to count our blessings and be thankful not just on Thanksgiving Day but each day of our life. We must learn to appreciate what we have and make the best of the situation that we are blessed with. Developing a lifestyle of gratitude is gr.jpgying because I believe thankful people are happy people.
Here is an inspiring story to help us appreciate and be thankful for the Creator's blessings of our life with all our faculties intact, which we may easily take for granted.
Robert "Bob" J. Smithdas is an author, poet, lecturer, deep-sea fisherman, gardener, art collector and gourmet cook. He has been married to Michelle for 29 years. She too is a writer, lecturer, exercise buff and cake baker. The couple holds bachelor's and master's degrees and both are recipients of honorary doctorates.
However, they have only three of the five senses. They live their life in silence and darkness. They both are deaf and blind. Their story is a remarkable testament to the resilience of the human spirit. The couple lives a relatively self-sufficient life, cooking by touch, using teletype-style phones and computers, wearing pagers that vibrate to signal the ringing of the telephone or doorbell and doing all their own housekeeping and chores, at their home. They travel extensively and enjoy a social circle that includes not only the deaf-blind, but also sighted and hearing friends. They both are teachers at the Helen Keller National Center on Long Island and have received numerous awards for their work in the training and rehabilitation of the deaf-blind.
Advocate for the deaf-blind, Bob Smithdas is the director of community education at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults in Sands Point. He lost his sight and hearing at the age of 4, when he contracted cerebrospinal meningitis. "Unable to hear the sound of my own voice, I gradually lost my feeling for the pitch and stresses that give speech its human character," he wrote in his 1958 autobiography, "Life at My Fingerprints." He learned to communicate through POP, the print-on-the-palm method of printing block letters on the palm of the hand. He is one of a few deaf-blind persons skilled in the use of Tadoma, which enables him to place his right thumb on the lips of the speaker and his fingers over the vocal chords to interpret what is being said.
With the assistance of sighted, hearing friends who attended class with him, Smithdas transcribed all his textbooks into Braille. He was the first deaf-blind person, after Helen Keller, to graduate from St. John's University in 1950 and at the top of his class. In 1953, he became the first deaf-blind person to earn a master's degree from New York University in the field of vocational guidance and rehabilitation of the handicapped. Articulating each word precisely, reportedly, he lectures extensively before audiences nationwide. Thanks to Braille, he was avid reader by his teens; he reads 20 magazines a month, ranking from The Economist to Popular Mechanics to Martha Stewart Living. He understands the stock market and operas.
In addition to teaching how to cook over a hot stove, how to crack open an egg and save the yolk, how to do office work and use computers, Mr. and Mrs. Smithdas teach the other deaf and blind people deaf-blind Braille, vocabulary, sign language, and other communication skills. To promote her profession, Mrs. Smithdas has written an instructional Braille book for the deaf-blind, because most Braille books are geared for the blind only.
In short, they both prepare their pupils to live organized, independently happy lives. Their top mission is to teach the deaf-blind to live and work to the best of their capabilities and as independently as possible. They feel that this is the best lesson they can offer, in the way they have overcome adversity in their own lives. Despite the enormous obstacles the couple faces in accomplishing even the minutest tasks of daily life, they told ABC's Barbara Walters, as she interviewed them, that they feel happy and are grateful for what they're able to do and what they have. They see their life full of opportunities rather than limits. They lead their life full of love, work, hobbies, and humor. It's awesome to learn about the Smithdases and what they have achieved with only three of their senses.
The lesson here is a life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are thankful, despite the setbacks, and who make the most of what they have received. A sense of gratitude can turn a negative into a positive. We must learn to find a way to be thankful for even our troubles, for they may turn into blessings.
Remember the very inception of the Thanksgiving tradition. In times of ordeals and tragedies, the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving Day in October 1621, feasting on wild turkey and Indian corn, with the human spirit reaching out to God in gratitude for the blessings and overall majesty of life.
The new world's harsh weather threatened the very survival of the Pilgrims. That winter more than half of the heads of households perished. Aboard the ship coming over, only five of the eighteen wives lived through the ravages of scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. In the midst of life's most difficult trials, they gave thanks for God's presence in their adversity because they knew that the struggle could make them better and help them open their eyes to the deeper facts of existence.
Our giving thanks is a spiritual reaction to the benefits received. Let us count our blessings and express our heartfelt thanks for the "blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies," and the majestic gift of life.
May our Thanksgiving be filled with health and happiness and peace and plenty.
I am sure we all have stories to tell about our losses and sufferings. However, these experiences are inevitably bound with the territory called life. Therefore, instead of looking before and after and pining for what is not, we need to learn how to count our blessings and be thankful not just on Thanksgiving Day but each day of our life. We must learn to appreciate what we have and make the best of the situation that we are blessed with. Developing a lifestyle of gratitude is gr.jpgying because I believe thankful people are happy people.
Here is an inspiring story to help us appreciate and be thankful for the Creator's blessings of our life with all our faculties intact, which we may easily take for granted.
Robert "Bob" J. Smithdas is an author, poet, lecturer, deep-sea fisherman, gardener, art collector and gourmet cook. He has been married to Michelle for 29 years. She too is a writer, lecturer, exercise buff and cake baker. The couple holds bachelor's and master's degrees and both are recipients of honorary doctorates.
However, they have only three of the five senses. They live their life in silence and darkness. They both are deaf and blind. Their story is a remarkable testament to the resilience of the human spirit. The couple lives a relatively self-sufficient life, cooking by touch, using teletype-style phones and computers, wearing pagers that vibrate to signal the ringing of the telephone or doorbell and doing all their own housekeeping and chores, at their home. They travel extensively and enjoy a social circle that includes not only the deaf-blind, but also sighted and hearing friends. They both are teachers at the Helen Keller National Center on Long Island and have received numerous awards for their work in the training and rehabilitation of the deaf-blind.
Advocate for the deaf-blind, Bob Smithdas is the director of community education at the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults in Sands Point. He lost his sight and hearing at the age of 4, when he contracted cerebrospinal meningitis. "Unable to hear the sound of my own voice, I gradually lost my feeling for the pitch and stresses that give speech its human character," he wrote in his 1958 autobiography, "Life at My Fingerprints." He learned to communicate through POP, the print-on-the-palm method of printing block letters on the palm of the hand. He is one of a few deaf-blind persons skilled in the use of Tadoma, which enables him to place his right thumb on the lips of the speaker and his fingers over the vocal chords to interpret what is being said.
With the assistance of sighted, hearing friends who attended class with him, Smithdas transcribed all his textbooks into Braille. He was the first deaf-blind person, after Helen Keller, to graduate from St. John's University in 1950 and at the top of his class. In 1953, he became the first deaf-blind person to earn a master's degree from New York University in the field of vocational guidance and rehabilitation of the handicapped. Articulating each word precisely, reportedly, he lectures extensively before audiences nationwide. Thanks to Braille, he was avid reader by his teens; he reads 20 magazines a month, ranking from The Economist to Popular Mechanics to Martha Stewart Living. He understands the stock market and operas.
In addition to teaching how to cook over a hot stove, how to crack open an egg and save the yolk, how to do office work and use computers, Mr. and Mrs. Smithdas teach the other deaf and blind people deaf-blind Braille, vocabulary, sign language, and other communication skills. To promote her profession, Mrs. Smithdas has written an instructional Braille book for the deaf-blind, because most Braille books are geared for the blind only.
In short, they both prepare their pupils to live organized, independently happy lives. Their top mission is to teach the deaf-blind to live and work to the best of their capabilities and as independently as possible. They feel that this is the best lesson they can offer, in the way they have overcome adversity in their own lives. Despite the enormous obstacles the couple faces in accomplishing even the minutest tasks of daily life, they told ABC's Barbara Walters, as she interviewed them, that they feel happy and are grateful for what they're able to do and what they have. They see their life full of opportunities rather than limits. They lead their life full of love, work, hobbies, and humor. It's awesome to learn about the Smithdases and what they have achieved with only three of their senses.
The lesson here is a life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are thankful, despite the setbacks, and who make the most of what they have received. A sense of gratitude can turn a negative into a positive. We must learn to find a way to be thankful for even our troubles, for they may turn into blessings.
Remember the very inception of the Thanksgiving tradition. In times of ordeals and tragedies, the Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving Day in October 1621, feasting on wild turkey and Indian corn, with the human spirit reaching out to God in gratitude for the blessings and overall majesty of life.
The new world's harsh weather threatened the very survival of the Pilgrims. That winter more than half of the heads of households perished. Aboard the ship coming over, only five of the eighteen wives lived through the ravages of scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. In the midst of life's most difficult trials, they gave thanks for God's presence in their adversity because they knew that the struggle could make them better and help them open their eyes to the deeper facts of existence.
Our giving thanks is a spiritual reaction to the benefits received. Let us count our blessings and express our heartfelt thanks for the "blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies," and the majestic gift of life.
May our Thanksgiving be filled with health and happiness and peace and plenty.