How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Dale Carnegie

by Dale Carnegie

When total blindness closed in, Tarkington said: “I found I could take the loss of my eyesight, just as a man can take anything else. If I lost all five of my senses, I know I could live on inside my mind. For it is in the mind we see, and in the mind we live, whether we know it or not.” In the hope of restoring his eyesight, Tarkington had to go through more than twelve operations within one year. With local anaesthetic! Did he rail against this? He knew it had to be done. He knew he couldn’t escape it, so the only way to lessen his suffering was to take it with grace. He refused a private room at the hospital and went into a ward, where he could be with other people who had troubles, too. He tried to cheer them up. And when he had to submit to repeated operations-fully conscious of what was being done to his eyes-he tried to remember how fortunate he was. “How wonderful!” he said. “How wonderful, that science now has the skill to operate on anything so delicate as the human eye!” The average man would have been a nervous wreck if he had had to endure more than twelve operations and blindness. Yet Tarkington said: “I would not exchange this experience for a happier one.” It taught him acceptance. It taught him that nothing life could bring him was beyond his strength to endure. It taught him, as John Milton discovered, that “It is not miserable to be blind, it is only miserable not to be able to endure blindness.”

Booth Tarkington's Blindness