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.
