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第58章 失明者的健全生活

A Ball to Roll Around

Read the article quickly and answer the following questions.

1. How did the author adapt himself to life?

2. How does a pattern of life influence your own life?

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 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.

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—potential to live, you might call it—which I didn’t see, and they made me want to fight it out with blindness.

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 imperfections4, a real, positive person; that somewhere in the sweeping, intricate pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

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.

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.

I believe I made progress more readily because of a pattern of life shaped by certain values. I find it easier to live with myself if I try to be honest. I find strength in the friendship and interdependence of people. I would be blind indeed without my sighted friends. And very humbly I say that I have found purpose and comfort in a mortal’s ambition toward Godliness. Perhaps a man without sight is blinded less by the importance of material things than other men are. All I know is that a belief in the existence of a higher nobility for men to strive for has been an inspiration that has helped me more than anything else to hold my life together.

我的双眼是在4岁时失明的。在大西洋城的一个货场,当时我从棚车上摔了下来,头部受到了重创。如今32岁的我依然能模糊地想起阳光的灿烂和红色的鲜亮。重见光明固然美好,但不幸也会给人带来奇妙的感觉。那天,我突然意识到,如果我没有失明,也许就不会像现在这样热爱生活。现在,我相信生活。如果我不是盲人,我不敢肯定自己是否还会这样深信不疑。我并不是说宁愿失去双眼,而只是想说,失去它们让我更加珍惜自己的其他能力。

我相信,生活要求人们不断自我调整以适应现实。一个人若能更及时地自我调整,那他的生活也就更加有意义。然而,自我调整并不容易。曾经我时常感到疑惑、恐惧,但我很幸运。父母与老师在我的身上看到了我无法看到的东西——即生活的潜能,于是他们鼓励我与失明抗争到底。

我必须学会相信自己,这对我来说是最难的课程,不过也是最基础的。如果做不到,我就会彻底崩溃,最终只能坐在前门的摇椅上度过自己的余生。我所说的相信自己,并不只局限于帮我独自走下陌生楼梯的那种简单的自信,而是指更为广泛的方面,即相信自己虽然不完美,却是一个真实的积极向上的人,相信在茫茫人海中,必定有一个适合自己的特殊位置。

我用了很多年的时间去发现并巩固这种信念,这得从最基础的事情开始。一天,有人给了我一个室内棒球,我以为他是在挖苦我,因此感觉受到了伤害。我说:“我玩不了。”他催促着我:“拿着,让它在地上滚。”这句话在我的脑海中留下了深刻的印象。“让它在地上滚!”通过滚球,我可以听到它滚动的位置。一个念头出现在我的脑海,那就是打棒球,这是我曾经认为不可能实现的目标。于是,我在费城奥弗布洛克盲人学校,发明了一种很受欢迎的棒球游戏。我们称之为地面球。

我为自己的一生树立了很多目标,并准备逐一实现。没错,我必须了解自己的极限。如果一开始就知道目标超出了自己的能力,而不去实现,那不是件好事,最终只会酿成失败的苦果。有时我也会失败,但不管怎么说,我总会有所进步。

我相信,正是因为我的生命模式基于一定的价值观,我才能更容易地进步。我发现,如果我努力做个诚实的人,生活也就会更容易。我从友谊以及与他人的相互依赖中获得了力量。如果没有那些视力正常的朋友,我就是一个真正的盲人。可以谦恭地说,我生活的目标和慰籍是从一个凡人信仰上帝的志向中找到的。也许,物质生活对于失明者而言,并不像对其他人那样重要。我只知道,有一个信念一直鼓舞着我,那就是努力成为高尚的人,而且也只有它能帮助我健全地生活。

Ace in the Hole

Keywords and expressions

1. mock

作动词:嘲弄

例:Those who mock history will be mocked by history.

嘲弄历史的人必将被历史所嘲弄。

The pupil did his best, and the teacher was wrong to mock his efforts.

这个学生已尽了最大努力,老师嘲笑他的努力是不对的。

词组:make a mock of 嘲弄

2. adjustment

作名词:调整,调节

例:The company made an adjustment in my salary.

公司对我的薪金作了调整。

Chunks in practice

Please fill in the blanks with the proper words according to the given

sentences.

1. The child was______ by the noise and the crowds.

孩子让噪声和人群给弄得晕头转向。

2. This is a novel with an______ plot.

这是一本情节错综复杂的小说。

3. He suggested ______ that care must be taken in the eulogy of her friend.

他还隐晦地向她提议,在赞美她的朋友时一定要小心。

Now a Try

Read the passage again, then try to make a summary.

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