滚球

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，我从货场一辆棚车上摔下来，头先着地，双目失明了。现在我32岁了。我能模糊地记得阳光的灿烂和红色的鲜艳。能恢复视力固然好，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 hadn’t been blind. I believe in life now. I am not so sure that I would have believed in it so deeply， otherwise. I don’t 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.

前幾天我突然想到，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视力正常，会不会像现在这样深深地相信生活。我并没有宁愿成为盲人的意思，我的意思只是失去视力使我更加珍惜我还剩的其他能力。

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 will become. 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 didn’t see， and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

我相信，生活要求人不断地自我调整以适应现实。一个人越能及时地做出这些调整，他的个人世界就会变得越有意义。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——你可以称之为活下去的潜力吧——我自己却没有发现，而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 hadn’t 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 believing 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。那是基本条件。如果做不到这一点，我的精神就会崩溃，只能坐在前门廊的摇椅中度过余生。当我说相信自己时，并不仅仅指支持我独自走下陌生楼梯的那种自信，那是一部分。而我指的是更大的事：是坚信尽管自己有缺陷，却是一个真正有进取心的人，坚信在芸芸众生，错综复杂的格局中，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 can’t 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 Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind， I invented a successful variation of baseball. We called it ground ball.

我花了很长时间才发现并不断加强这一信念。它要从最基本的事做起。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里滚动。这让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 a series of goals and then tried to reach them， one at a time. I had to learn my limitations. It was no good trying 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。我必须了解我能力有限。一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。尽管我有时也失败过，但一般来说我总有进步。

Vocabulary

freight n. 货运

vaguely adv. 含糊地；暧昧地；茫然地

calamity n. 灾难；不幸事件

occur v. 发生；出现；闪现

otherwise adv. 否则；另外

adjustment n. 调整，调解

readily adv. 快捷地

bewilder v. 使迷惑；使为难

collapse v. 倒塌；崩溃

porch n. 门廊；游廊；走廊

staircase n. 樓梯

despite prep. 不管；虽有

intricate adj. 错综复杂的；难理解的

urge v. 催促；推进

limitation n. 限制；局限

bitterness n. 苦味；苦难