A Ball to Roll Around　滾 球

A Ball to Roll Around　滾 球

◎ Robert G. Allman

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

4歲時，在亞特蘭大城，我從貨場一輛貨車上摔下來撞到頭，不幸雙目失明。如今，我已經(jīng)32歲，但是我還依稀記得陽光的明媚，七彩的色澤。若是雙眼有幸能夠復明，那該多么美好！不過，災難的確可以賜予人神奇的力量。若是沒有失明，我大概不會像現(xiàn)在這樣熱愛生活，也無法確定能否像現(xiàn)在這樣感情強烈。我并不是說我情愿過著這樣失去陽光的生活，而是說，正是因為失去才更讓我懂得珍惜現(xiàn)在所擁有的一切。

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.

我相信生活是需要不斷與現(xiàn)實協(xié)調(diào)的。一個人越是有能力充分把握好調(diào)節(jié)的步伐，那么，他的生命將越有意義。但是，這種調(diào)節(jié)絕非易事。我曾一度迷茫害怕，幸運的是，我的父母和老師看到了我生活下去的潛能，一種我起初并沒有發(fā)覺，但是的確激起我繼續(xù)斗爭生存下去的信念。

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.

最難的課程便是我必須學會相信自己！這也是基礎。如果不能做到這點，我將崩潰，從此變成一個輪椅主人，待在門廊前，度過我的余生。當我說我相信自己，并不僅僅指自信可以幫助我一個人從陌生的樓梯走下來。雖然這只是其中的一部分。我所指的是更大的幫助：即使身體有缺陷，我仍然是一個真正積極的人；即使在這個復雜、動蕩的人際環(huán)境中，我仍然有自己創(chuàng)造的特殊的位置。

It took my 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 call it ground ball. We called it ground ball.

我花了很多年的時間發(fā)現(xiàn)并堅定這種信念。這必須從最基本的小事做起。有一次，一個人給了我一個室內(nèi)棒球，我內(nèi)心受到極大傷害，認為他只是在嘲笑我，因為我并不能玩它。

“拿起它，然后滾。”

這些話環(huán)繞在我耳際：“滾它！”

因為球在地上滾動，我能聽見它的聲響，得知它的去向。這讓我想起一個從未想過的主意：打棒球。在費城的奧福布魯克盲人學校，我發(fā)明了一種受歡迎的棒球游戲：我們稱之為地面球。

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.

一生中，我不斷為自己設立目標，并且盡力去完成。我必須知道自己的缺陷。嘗試那些開始就知道不可能的事情并沒有任何益處，因為那只能帶來盲目的失敗。但有些時候，我可能會失敗，不過，不管結果如何，這種挑戰(zhàn)讓我一直成長。

超多雙語閱讀，盡在聽力課堂