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.
我的雙眼是在4歲時失明的。在大西洋城的一個貨場，當時我從棚車上摔了下來，頭部受到了重創。如今32歲的我依然能模糊地想起陽光的燦爛和紅色的鮮亮。重見光明固然美好，但不幸也會給人帶來奇妙的感覺。那天，我突然意識到，如果我沒有失明，也許就不會像現在這樣熱愛生活。現在，我相信生活。如果我不是盲人，我不敢肯定自己是否還會這樣深信不疑。我並不是說寧願失去雙眼，而隻是想說，失去它們讓我更加珍惜自己的其他能力。
我相信，生活要求人們不斷自我調整以適應現實。一個人若能更及時地自我調整，那他的生活也就更加有意義。然而，自我調整並不容易。曾經我時常感到疑惑、恐懼，但我很幸運。父母與老師在我的身上看到了我無法看到的東西——即生活的潛能，於是他們鼓勵我與失明抗爭到底。
我必須學會相信自己，這對我來說是最難的課程，不過也是最基礎的。如果做不到，我就會徹底崩潰，最終隻能坐在前門的搖椅上度過自己的餘生。我所說的相信自己，並不隻局限於
幫我獨自走下陌生樓梯的那種簡單的自信，而是指更為廣泛的方麵，即相信自己雖然不完美，卻是一個真實的積極向上的人，相信在茫茫人海中，必定有一個適合自己的特殊位置。
我用了很多年的時間去發現並鞏固這種信念，這得從最基礎的事情開始。一天，有人給了我一個室內棒球，我以為他是在挖苦我，因此感覺受到了傷害。我說：“我玩不了。”他催促著我：“拿著，讓它在地上滾。”這句話在我的腦海中留下了深刻的印象。“讓它在地上滾！”通過滾球，我可以聽到它滾動的位置。一個念頭出現在我的腦海，那就是打棒球，這是我曾經認為不可能實現的目標。於是，我在費城奧弗布洛克盲人學校，發明了一種很受歡迎的棒球遊戲。我們稱之為地麵球。
我為自己的一生樹立了很多目標，並準備逐一實現。沒錯，我必須了解自己的極限。如果一開始就知道目標超出了自己的能力，而不去實現，那不是件好事，最終隻會釀成失敗的苦果。有時我也會失敗，但不管怎麽說，我總會有所進步。
我相信，正是因為我的生命模式基於一定的價值觀，我才能更容易地進步。我發現，如果我努力做個誠實的人，生活也就會更容易。我從友誼以及與他人的相互依賴中獲得了力量。如果沒有那些視力正常的朋友，我就是一個真正的盲人。可以謙恭地說，我生活的目標和慰籍是從一個凡人信仰上帝的誌向中找到的。也許，物質生活對於失明者而言，並不像對其他人那樣重要。我隻知道，有一個信念一直鼓舞著我，那就是努力成為高尚的人，而且也隻有它能幫助我健全地生活。
Ace in the Hole
Keywords and expressions
1. mock
作動詞：嘲弄
例：Those who mock history will be mocked by history.
嘲弄曆史的人必將被曆史所嘲弄。
The pupil did his best, and the teacher was wrong to mock his efforts.這個學生已盡了最大努力，老師嘲笑他的努力是不對的。
詞組：make a mock of嘲弄
2. adjustment
作名詞：調整，調節
例：The company made an adjustment in my salary.
公司對我的薪金作了調整。
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.
孩子讓噪聲和人群給弄得暈頭轉向。
2. This is a novel with an______ plot.
這是一本情節錯綜複雜的小說。
3. He suggested ______ that care must be taken in the eulogy of her friend.
他還隱晦地向她提議，在讚美她的朋友時一定要小心。
Now a Try
Read the passage again, then try to make a summary.