写作素材：Amy PurdyTED演讲（双语版）

假如生活是一本书，而你是作者，那么你会希望自己编写出怎样的故事？而当年正是这个想法改变了我的人生。

If the life were a book and you were the author,how would you want you story to go? That's the question that changed my life for ever.

我在炎热的拉斯维加斯的沙漠中长大，我所向往的是自由自在的生活。我做着周游世界的白日梦，想象着能够住在下雪的地方，并把所有想讲的故事一一拍摄出来。19岁那年，高中毕业后的一天，我真的去了下雪的地方，成为了一名按摩治疗师。这份工作只需要用到手，旁边就是按摩桌。那时的我能去任何地方。这是人生中第一次，我感到自由、独立、安全。生活就在我的掌控之中。

Growing up in a hot Las Vegas desert, all I wanted was to be free,I would day dream about travelling the world, living in a place where it snowed, and I would picture all of the stories that I would go on to tell. At the age of nineteen, the day after I graduate high school, I move to a place where it snowed and I became a massage therapist. With this job all I needed were my hands and my massage table by my side and I could go anywhere. For the first time in my life, I felt free, independent, and completely in control of my life.

但这时我的生活出现了逆转。一天我感觉自己的了流感便提早回到了家，可是不到24小时，我住进了医院，要靠呼吸机维持生命，并且被告知只有不到2%的存活可能。几天之后，我陷入了昏迷，医生诊断为病毒性脑膜炎，一种疫苗可以预防的血液感染。在接下去的两个半月里，我失去了脾脏、肾脏，失去了左耳的听力，两腿膝盖以下被截肢。当我的父母用轮椅把我从医院推出来的时候，我感觉自己像是被拼起来的玩具人。

That is until my life took a detour. I went home from work one day with the thought I was the flu, and less then 24 hours later, I was in the hospital on life support, with less than 2% of chance of living. It wasn't until days later as I lay in a coma that the doctor diagnosed me with bacterial meningitis, a vaccine preventable blood infection. Over the course of two and a half months I've lost my spleen, my kidneys, the hearing in my left ear and both of my legs below the knee. When my parents wheeled me out of the hospital, I felt like I had been pieced back together like a patchwork doll.

那时我以为最坏的日子已经结束了，但是几周之后，当我第一次看到我的新腿，这才意识到远没有结束。我的支撑棒是笨重的金属块，它用管子与踝关节和黄色的橡胶脚固定在一起，从脚趾到踝关节上凸出来的橡胶线，看上去像静脉。我不知道自己想要什么，但绝对不会是这个。当时我的妈妈在我身旁，我们抱头痛哭，泪如雨下。

I thought the worse was over, until weeks later I when I saw my new legs for the first time. The calves were bulky blocks of metal with pipes bolted together for the ankles and a yellow rubber foot with the raised rubber line from the toes to the ankle to look like a vein. I didn't know what to expect but I wasn't expecting that. With my mum by my side, and tears streaming down our faces.

后来，我戴上这粗短的腿站了起来，那可真是太疼了，行动也不利索。我在想，天哪，我要怎么靠这些假肢周游世界？怎么过我想要的充满奇遇和有故事的生活？怎么再去滑雪？那天一到家我就爬上了床。此后几个月，生活都如此，我彻底失去了信念，逃避现实，对假肢置之不理，我在身体上和精神上彻底地崩溃了。

I strapped on these chunky legs and I stood up. They were so painful and so confining that all I could think was how am I ever going to travel the world in these things, how was I ever going to live the life full of adventures and stories as I always wanted,and how was I going to snowboard again? That day, I went home, I crawled into bed and this is what my life looked like for the next few months. Me passed out, escaping from reality with my legs resting by my side. I was absolutely, physically annd emotionally broken.

但是我知道，生活总要继续，为了过下去，我必须得跟过去的Amy告别，学着接纳新的Amy。我忽然明白，我的身高不必再是固定的5英尺5英寸(1.68m)，相反，我想多高就多高，想多矮就多矮，这完全取决于我跟谁约会。如果我去滑雪，那么脚再也不会被冻到。最大的好处是，我的脚能做成任意大小，穿进商场里的任何打折靴子。我做到了，这是没脚的好处！

But I knew that in order to move forward, I had to let go of the old Amy and learn to embrace the new Amy. And that is when it dawned on me that I didn't have to be 5 foot 5 anymore. I could be as tall as I wanted or as short as I wanted depending on who I was dating. And if I anoeboard again, my feet arent't going to get cold. And the best of all, I thought I can make my feet the size of all the shoes that are on the sales rack and I did! So there were benefits here.

这时我问自己，生活该怎么过？假如我的人生是一本书，而我是作者，那么我希望自己拥有怎样的故事？我开始做白日梦，我梦到和小时候一样，幻想自己优雅地走来走去，可以自由地帮助身边的其他人，可以去快乐地滑雪。我不能眼睁睁看着自己一点点消磨时间，我要去感觉，去感觉风拂过我的面庞，感觉我的心跳加速。似乎从那时开始，我的人生开始了新的篇章。

It was at this moment that I asked myself that life defining question: If my life were a book and I were the author, how would I want the story to go? And I began to daydream. I daydreamed as I did when I was a little girl and I imagined myself walking gracefully, helping other people through my journey and snowboarding again. And didn't just see myself carving down a mountain of powder, I could actually feel it. I could feel the wind against my face and the beat of my racing heart as if it were happening in that very moment. And that is when a new chapter in my life began.

四个月后，我回到了滑雪场，事情没有想象中那么顺利，我的膝盖和踝关节没办法弯曲。在上行的索道上，有一刻我吓到了所有的滑雪者，我的脚和滑雪板绑在一起飞下了山坡，可我还在山顶上。我当时很震惊，和其他滑雪者一样震惊，但是没有灰心。我知道只有找到合适的脚，我才能再来滑雪。这一次我学到，我们人生的局限和障碍，只会造成两种结局：要么让我们停滞不前，要么逼我们迸发出巨大的创造力。

Four months later I was back upon a snowboard, although things didn't go quite as expected: my knees and my ankles wouldn't bend and at one point I traumatized all the skiers on the aerial lift when I fell and my legs still attached to my snoeboard went flying down the mountain and I was on the top of the mountain still.I was so shocked, I was just as shockes as everybody else and I was so discouraged but I knew that if I could find the right pair of feet I would able to do this again. And this is when I learned that our borders and our obstacles can only do two things: one, stop us in our tracks or two, force us to get creative.

我研究了一年，依然没有弄清楚要用哪种脚，也没找到任何能帮到我的厂商，所以我决定自己做。我和我的假肢制造商一起随机地装配零件，我们做了一双能滑雪的脚。你看，生锈的螺栓、橡胶、木头和亮粉色胶带，虽然简陋但我能变换指甲油的颜色哦！这些假肢和我收到最好的21岁生日礼物：我爸爸给了我一个肾，让我又可以追梦了。我开始滑雪，回去工作，然后回到学校。在2005年的时候我参与投资了一个专为青年残疾人服务的非营利组织，让他们能参与到极限运动中来。后来，我有幸去到南非，帮助那里成千上万的孩子穿上鞋子使他们能够走路上学。再后来，去年二月，我赢回两座世界滑雪锦标赛金牌，这使我成为世界上滑雪排名最高的女残疾选手。

I did a year research, still couldn't figure out what kind of legs to use, couldn;t find any resources that could help me. So I decided to make a pair myself. My leg maker and I put random parts together and we made a pair of feet that I could snowboard in. As you can see, rusty bolts, rubber, wood and neon pink duct tape. And yes, I can change my toe nail polish. It was these legs and the best 21st birthday gift I could ever receive- a new kidney from my dad give me a new kinedy that allowed me to follow my dreams again. I started snowboarding, then I went back to work, then I went back to school. Then in 2005 I co-founded a non-profit organization for youth and young adults with physical disabilities so they could get involved with action sports. From there, I had the opportunity to go to South Africa where I helped to put shoes on thousands of children's feet so they could attend school. And just this past February, I won 2 back Board World Cup gold medals which made me the highest ranked adaptive female snowboard in the world.

11年前，我失去了双脚，我不知道能做什么。但如果今天你问我，是否愿意回头，让我的人生再回到原来的轨道，我的答案是：NO!因为我的脚没有让我失去能力，而是逼我依靠自己的想象力，相信各种可能性，让我相信想象力可以作为工具，打破任何藩篱。因为在我们的意识深处，我们可以做任何事，成为任何人。所以请永远地相信梦想，直面恐惧。让我们活出自我，超越极限！

11 years ago, when I lost my legs, I had no ideas what to expect. But if you ask me today, if I would ever wanna change my situation, I would have to say No because my legs haven't disabled me, if anything they've enabled me, they forced me to relay on my imagination and to believe in possibilities and that's why I believe that our imaginations can be used as tools for breaking through borders because in our minds, we can do anything and we can be anything. It's believing in those dreams and facing our fear head on that allows us to live our lives beyond our limits.