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.

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—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 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 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.

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. Then 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 is 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. That is the power of believing in myself.

4岁那年在大西洋城，我从货场一辆两厢车上摔下来，头先着地，造成了双目失明。现在我已经32岁了。我还能依稀地记得阳光是多么灿烂，红色是多么鲜艳。如果能恢复视觉固然非常好，但灾难有时也能对人产生奇妙的作用。

有一天我突然想到，倘若不是盲人，我或许不会像现在这样如此地热爱生活。现在的我相信生活，但我不能肯定如果我没有失明，会不会像现在这样对生活坚信不移。我并不是說我愿意成为盲人，我只是想说失去视力使我更加珍惜自己的所有。

我认为，生活要求人不断地调整自我以适应现实。人的调整能力越强，他的个人世界便会变得越有意义。调整决非易事。我曾感到茫然害怕，但我很幸运，我的父母和老师在我身上发现了某种东西——可以称之为生存的潜力吧——而我自己却并不知道。是他们激励我与失明拼搏到底。

我必须学会的最艰难的一课就是相信自己，这是最基本的。如果做不到这一点，我的人就会垮掉，然后坐在前门廊的摇椅中度过余生。我所说的相信自己并不单纯地指相信自己能独自走下陌生的楼梯，那只是一方面。我指的是更重要的东西：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。

我花了很长时间才坚定了这一信念。这要从最简单的事做起。有一次一个人给我一个室内玩的棒球，我以为他在嘲笑我，心里很难受。“我玩不了这个。”我说。“拿着吧，你可以让它在地面滚动的。”他竭力劝我。他的话触动了我。随后，在费城的奥弗布鲁克盲人学校，我发明了一种很受欢迎的棒球游戏，我们称其为“地面球”。

我的一生中给自己树立了一系列目标，然后努力去完成，一次完成一个。我必须清楚自己的局限，若开始就知道某个目标根本达不到却硬要去实现，那不会带来任何好处，只会带来失败的苦果。我有时也会失败，但一般来说总会取得进步。这就是相信自己带来的力量。