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歲那年在大西洋城，我從貨場一輛棚車上摔下來，頭先著地，於是雙目失明。現在我已經32歲了。我還模糊地記得陽光是多麼燦爛，紅色是多麼鮮豔。能恢復視覺固然好，但災難也能對人產生奇妙的作用。
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，我或許不會變得像現在這樣熱愛生活。現在我相信生活，但我不能肯定如果自己是明眼人，會不會像現在這樣深深地相信生活。這並不意味著我寧願成為盲人，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.
我認為，生活要求人不斷地自我調整以適應現實。人愈能及時地進行調整，他的個人世界便愈有意義。調整決非易事。我曾感到茫然害怕，但我很幸運，父母和老師在我身上發現了某種東西——可以稱之為活下去的潛力吧——而我自己卻沒有發現。他們激勵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 a 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.
我必須學會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，我的精神就會崩潰，只能坐在前門廊的搖椅中度過餘生。相信自己並不僅僅指支持我獨自走下陌生的樓梯的那種自信，那是一部分。我指的是大事：是堅信自己雖然有缺陷，卻是一個真正的有進取心的人；堅信在芸芸眾生錯綜複雜的格局當中，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.
我花了很長時間才樹立並不斷加強這一信念。這要從最簡單的事做起。有一次一個人給我一個室內玩的棒球，我以為他在嘲笑我，心裡很難受。「我不能使這個。」我說。「你拿去，」他竭力勸我，「在地上滾。」他的話在我腦子裡生了根。「在地上滾！」 滾球使我聽見它朝哪兒滾動。我馬上想到一個我曾認為不可能達到的目標：打棒球。在費城的奧弗布魯克盲人學校，我發明了一種很受人歡迎的棒球遊戲，我們稱它為地面球。
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.
我這一輩子給自己樹立了一系列目標，然後努力去達到，一次一個。我必須了解自己能力有限，若開始就知道某個目標根本達不到卻硬要去實現，那不會有任何好處，因為那只會帶來失敗的苦果。我有時也失敗過，但一般來說總有進步。
vocabulary
freight [freɪt] n. 貨運；運費；船貨 vt. 運送；裝貨
vaguely ['veɪglɪ] adv. 含糊地；曖昧地；模糊地
calamity [kə'læmɪtɪ] n. 災難；不幸事件
appreciate [ə'priːʃɪeɪt; -sɪ-] vi. 增值；漲價 vt. 欣賞；感激
staircase ['steəkeɪs] n. 樓梯
bitterness [bɪtənəs] n. 苦味；苦難；怨恨