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
一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 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。
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