英语励志美文精华 14

A Ball to Roll Around

By Robert Allman

I lost my sight when I was 4 years old by falling off a boxcar in a freight yard in Atlantic City, New Jersey¹, and landing on my head. Now, I am 32. I can vaguely² remember the brightness of sunshine and what color red is. It would be wonderful to see again. But a calamity³ can do strange things to people.

It occurred to me the other day that I might not have come to love life so, 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 more appreciate 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—oh, a 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 collapsed⁴ and become a chair rocker on the front porch for the rest of my life. When I say believe in myself, I am not talking about simply the kind of self-confidence that helps me down an unfamiliar⁵ 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 sweeping⁶, 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.

When I was a youngster, 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, roll it around.” By rolling the ball, I could listen 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 groundball.

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 humbly⁷, 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 higher existence of a nobility for men to strive for has been an inspiration that has helped me more than anything else to hold my life together.

1 jersey   

n.运动衫

参考例句：

• He wears a cotton jersey when he plays football.他穿运动衫踢足球。
• They were dressed alike in blue jersey and knickers.他们穿着一致，都是蓝色的运动衫和灯笼短裤。

2 vaguely   

adv.含糊地，暖昧地

参考例句：

• He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
• He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。

3 calamity   

n.灾害，祸患，不幸事件

参考例句：

• Even a greater natural calamity cannot daunt us. 再大的自然灾害也压不垮我们。
• The attack on Pearl Harbor was a crushing calamity.偷袭珍珠港(对美军来说)是一场毁灭性的灾难。

4 collapsed   

adj.倒塌的

参考例句：

• Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
• The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。

5 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

6 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

7 humbly   

adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地

参考例句：

• We humbly beg Your Majesty to show mercy. 我们恳请陛下发发慈悲。
• "You must be right, Sir,'said John humbly. “你一定是对的，先生，”约翰恭顺地说道。