A Ball to Roll Around
滚球
by Robert G Allman
罗伯特·G·奥尔曼
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 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 didn’t 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.调整决非易事.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 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,只能坐在前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.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 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.