It took me years to discover and strengthen this assurance. It had to start with the most elementary things. Onc e 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.
我花了很长时间才树立并不断加强这一信念。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。“我不能使这个。”我说。“你拿去，”他竭力劝我，“在地上滚。”他的话在我脑子里生了根。“在地上滚！” 滚球使我听见它朝哪儿滚动。我马上想到一个我曾认为不可能达到的目标：打棒球。在费城的奥弗布鲁克盲人学校，我发明了一种很受人欢迎的棒球游戏，我们称它为地面球。
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.
我这一辈子给自己树立了一系列目标，然后努力去达到，一次一个。我必须了解自己能力有限，若开始就知道某个目标根本达不到却硬要去实现，那不会有任何好处，因为那只会带来失败的苦果。我有时也失败过，但一般来说总有进步。
