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A Ball to Roll Around 滚 球
◎ 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
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 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—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
life. When I say belief in myself I am not talking about simply the kind of self-confidence that helps
me down an unfamiliar4 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 sweeping5,
intricate pattern of people there is a special place where I can make myself fit.
It took my 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 call it ground ball. 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.
4岁时，在亚特兰大城，我从货场一辆货车上摔下来撞到头，不幸双目失明。如今，我已
经32岁，但是我还依稀记得阳光的明媚，七彩的色泽。若是双眼有幸能够复明，那该多么美
好！不过，灾难的确可以赐予人神奇的力量。若是没有失明，我大概不会像现在这样热爱生
活，也无法确定能否像现在这样感情强烈。我并不是说我情愿过着这样失去阳光的生活，而
是说，正是因为失去才更让我懂得珍惜现在所拥有的一切。
我相信生活是需要不断与现实协调的。一个人越是有能力充分把握好调节的步伐，那
么，他的生命将越有意义。但是，这种调节绝非易事。我曾一度迷茫害怕，幸运的是，我的
父母和老师看到了我生活下去的潜能，一种我起初并没有发觉，但是的确激起我继续斗争生
存下去的信念。
最难的课程便是我必须学会相信自己！这也是基础。如果不能做到这点，我将崩溃，从
此变成一个轮椅主人，待在门廊前，度过我的余生。当我说我相信自己，并不仅仅指自信可
以帮助我一个人从陌生的楼梯走下来。虽然这只是其中的一部分。我所指的是更大的帮助：
即使身体有缺陷，我仍然是一个真正积极的人；即使在这个复杂、动荡的人际环境中，我仍
然有自己创造的特殊的位置。
我花了很多年的时间发现并坚定这种信念。这必须从最基本的小事做起。有一次，一个
人给了我一个室内棒球，我内心受到极大伤害，认为他只是在嘲笑我，因为我并不能玩它。
“拿起它，然后滚。”
这些话环绕在我耳际：“滚它！”
因为球在地上滚动，我能听见它的声响，得知它的去向。这让我想起一个从未想过的主
意：打棒球。在费城的奥福布鲁克盲人学校，我发明了一种受欢迎的棒球游戏：我们称之为
地面球。
一生中，我不断为自己设立目标，并且尽力去完成。我必须知道自己的缺陷。尝试那些
开始就知道不可能的事情并没有任何益处，因为那只能带来盲目的失败。但有些时候，我可
能会失败，不过，不管结果如何，这种挑战让我一直成长。
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