失明者的健全生活A Ball to Roll Around

罗伯特·G.奥尔曼/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 vaguely¹remember 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 adjustment²is 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 collapsed³and 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&nbsp；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。