A Ball to Roll Around

滾球

Robert G Allman

羅伯特·G·奧爾曼

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 colour red is. It would be wonderful to see again, but a calamity can do strange things to people.

4歲那年在大西洋城，我從貨場(chǎng)一輛火車上摔下來(lái)，頭先著地，于是雙目失明。現(xiàn)在我已經(jīng)32歲了。我還模糊地記得陽(yáng)光是多么燦爛，紅色是多么鮮艷。能恢復(fù)視覺(jué)固然好，但災(zāi)難也能對(duì)人產(chǎn)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.

有一天我突然想到，倘若我不是盲人，我或許不會(huì)變得像現(xiàn)在這樣熱愛(ài)生活。現(xiàn)在我相信生活，但我不能肯定如果自己是明眼人，會(huì)不會(huì)像現(xiàn)在這樣深深地相信生活。這并不意味著我寧愿成為盲人，而只是意味著失去視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 didn’t see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

我認(rèn)為，生活要求人不斷地自我調(diào)整以適應(yīng)現(xiàn)實(shí)。人愈能及時(shí)地進(jìn)行調(diào)整，他的個(gè)人世界便愈有意義。調(diào)整決非易事。我曾感到茫然害怕，但我很幸運(yùn)，父母和老師在我身上發(fā)現(xiàn)了某種東西——可以稱之為活下去的潛力吧——而我自己卻沒(méi)有發(fā)現(xiàn)。他們激勵(lì)我誓與失明拼搏到底。

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 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.

我必須學(xué)會(huì)的最艱難的一課就是相信自己，這是基本條件。如做不到這一點(diǎn)，我的精神就會(huì)崩潰，只能坐在前門(mén)廊的搖椅中度過(guò)余生。相信自己并不僅僅指支持我獨(dú)自走下陌生的樓梯的那種自信，那是一部分。我指的是大事：是堅(jiān)信自己雖然有缺陷，卻是一個(gè)真正的有進(jìn)取心的人；堅(jiān)信在蕓蕓眾生錯(cuò)綜復(fù)雜的格局當(dāng)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. Onc e 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.

我花了很長(zhǎng)時(shí)間才樹(shù)立并不斷加強(qiáng)這一信念。這要從最簡(jiǎn)單的事做起。有一次一個(gè)人給我一個(gè)室內(nèi)玩的棒球，我以為他在嘲笑我，心里很難受。“我不能使這個(gè)。”我說(shuō)。“你拿去，”他竭力勸我，“在地上滾。”他的話在我腦子里生了根。“在地上滾！” 滾球使我聽(tīng)見(jiàn)它朝哪兒滾動(dòng)。我馬上想到一個(gè)我曾認(rèn)為不可能達(dá)到的目標(biāo)：打棒球。在費(fèi)城的奧弗布魯克盲人學(xué)校，我發(fā)明了一種很受人歡迎的棒球游戲，我們稱它為地面球。

All my life I have set ahead of me 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.

我這一輩子給自己樹(shù)立了一系列目標(biāo)，然后努力去達(dá)到，一次一個(gè)。我必須了解自己能力有限，若開(kāi)始就知道某個(gè)目標(biāo)根本達(dá)不到卻硬要去實(shí)現(xiàn)，那不會(huì)有任何好處，因?yàn)槟侵粫?huì)帶來(lái)失敗的苦果。我有時(shí)也失敗過(guò)，但一般來(lái)說(shuō)總有進(jìn)步。

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