Original Diagnosis

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Message for Daily LivingMonday August 10, 2009

 

Original Diagnosis Zig Ziglar

When I was a youngster, I periodically heard someone make a statement in a rich, Southern accent like, " He just ain't no 'count, " or " He will never amount to a hill'a beans, " indicating that in their opinion the individual in question had very little future. However, history has proven that many times those early opinions were ill-founded and completely wrong.

Edison's teacher was critical of him, accusing him of being a daydreamer and possibly a little slow, so his mother withdrew him from public school and educated him at home. My younger brother wanted to follow me into sales but did not have the " touch, " and though he struggled mightily, he just couldn't sell. He persisted and ultimately broke not only my sales records, but company records as well.

Louis Braille is a classic example of how we often feel that a " handicapped " person has no future. However, the disability simply requires them to do things in a different way. As a 3-year-old, Louis Braille, who had been forbidden to touch his father's tools, climbed up on a workbench and picked up a sharp metal awl to poke holes in leather. Tragically, the awl slipped and plunged into his left eye. As a result, Louis developed an eye infection that spread to his other eye, resulting in total blindness by the time he was 4 years old.

In the early 19th century, to be blind simply meant to be helpless and forever dependent upon others. Fortunately, his parents did not buy that idea, and decided not to treat him differently from his siblings. Louis was a persistent youngster and used the cane his father made him to memorize how many taps it took to get from one point to another. He developed a keen sense of smell and identity with sounds. At age 6, a local priest tutored him three times a week. He had a marvelous memory. He was able to memorize the names of writers and artists and could recite long verses of poetry.

Because of Braille's keen mind, the priest prevailed on the village schoolmaster to take him as a student, and Louis soaked up everything. With his mental alertness, he could solve complex math problems in his head. But he could not read and write. He could only sit and listen to turning pages.

When Louis was about 10, Barbier, a retired ship's captain, had developed a code system of raised dots and dashes in heavy paper so French soldiers could send messages in the dark. In 1821, Barbier offered his " sonography " method to blind students. Louis was ecstatic, finding it easy to read dots and dashes with his fingers and writing messages using a stylus on paper. The problem was that the system was based on sounds, so there were no numbers or punctuation marks. As a result, Louis spent all of his free time working to simplify the groups of dots and dashes.

Barbier's system used as many as 20 dots per syllable and up to 100 per word. It took him many months, but Louis Braille dramatically simplified the system. His school arranged for him to meet Barbier, who left insulted that a 13-year-old youth was suggesting changes to his method. Braille persisted, and by age 15, his system was completed and is still in use today.

Question: Just what is a hill'a beans worth, anyway? To find out more about Zig Ziglar and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. Subscribe to Zig Ziglar's free e-mail newsletter through info@....

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