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人生最艰难的一课就是学会相信自己

2014-11-05

初中生之友·中旬刊 2014年9期
关键词:摇椅棒球盲人

I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight yard in Atlantic City and landing on my head. Now I am thirty-two. I can vaguely remember the brightness of sunshine and what red color is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a calamity can do strange things to people.

4岁那年在大西洋城,我从货场一辆火车上摔下来,头先着地,于是双目失明。现在我已经32岁了。我还模糊地记得阳光是多么灿烂,红色是多么鲜艳。能恢复视觉固然好,但灾难也能对人产生奇妙的作用。

It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life as I do if I hadnt been blind. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply, otherwise. I dont mean that I would prefer to go without my eyes. I simply mean that the loss of them made me appreciate the more what I had left.

有一天我突然想到,倘若我不是盲人,我或许不会变得像现在这样热爱生活。现在我相信生活,但我不能肯定如果自己是明眼人,会不会像现在这样深深地相信生活。这并不意味着我宁愿成为盲人,而只是意味着失去视力使我更加珍惜自己其他的能力。

Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of adjustments to reality. The more readily a person is able to make these adjustments, the more meaningful his own private world becomes. The adjustment is never easy. I was bewildered and afraid. But I was lucky. My parents and my teachers saw something in me —— a potential to live, you might call it —— which I didnt see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

我认为,生活要求人不断地自我调整以适应现实。人愈能及时地进行调整,他的个人世界便愈有意义。调整绝非易事。我曾感到茫然害怕,但我很幸运,父母和老师在我身上发现了某种东西——可以称之为活下去的潜力吧——而我自己却没有发现。他们激励我誓与失明拼搏到底。

The hardest lesson I had to learn was to believe in myself. That was basic. If I hadnt been able to do that, I would have collapsed and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self-confidence that helps me down an unfamiliar staircase alone. That is part of it. But I mean something bigger than that: an assurance that I am, despite imperfections, a real, positive person that somewhere in the sweeping, intricate pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

我必须学会的最艰难的一课就是相信自己,这是基本条件。如做不到这一点,我的精神就会崩溃,只能坐在门廊的摇椅中度过余生。相信自己并不仅仅指支持我独自走下陌生的楼梯的那种自信,那是一部分。我指的是大事:是坚信自己虽然有缺陷,却是一个真正的有进取心的人;坚信在芸芸众生错综复杂的格局当中,自有我可以安身立命的一席之地。

It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. It had to start with the most elementary things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball, I thought he was mocking me and I was hurt. “I cant use this,” I said. “Take it with you,” he urged me,” and roll it around. “The words stuck in my head.” Roll it around!” By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an idea how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball. At Philadelphias Overbrook School for the Blind I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

我花了很长时间才树立并不断加强这一信念。这要从最简单的事做起。有一次一个人给我一个室内玩的棒球,我以为他在嘲笑我,心里很难受。“我不能使这个。”我说。“你拿去,”他竭力劝我,“在地上滚。”他的话在我脑子里生了根。“在地上滚!” 滚球使我听见它朝哪儿滚动。我马上想到一个我曾认为不可能达到的目标:打棒球。在费城的奥弗布鲁克盲人学校,我发明了一种很受人欢迎的棒球游戏,我们称它为地面球。

All my life I have set ahead of is a series of goals and then tried to reach them, one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good to try for something I knew at the start was wildly out of reach because that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on the average I made progress.

我这一辈子给自己树立了一系列目标,然后努力去达到,一次一个。我必须了解自己能力有限,若开始就知道某个目标根本达不到却硬要去实现,那不会有任何好处,因为那只会带来失败的苦果。我有时也失败过,但一般来说总有进步。

(徐 徐 摘)

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