Thomas Edison was probably the greatest inventor in American history. But when he first attended school in Port Huron, Michigan, his teachers complained that he was “too slow” and hard to handle. As a result, Edison’s mother decided to take her son out of school and teach him at home.

The young Edison was fascinated by science. At the age of 10 he had already set up his first chemistry laboratory. Edison eventually produced in his lifetime more than 1,300 inventions.

愛迪生或許是美國歷史上最偉大的發明家。最初他在學於密西根州休倫港學校時，他的老師曾抱怨說，他「太遲鈍了」，而且還難於管教。因此，他的母親決定把他帶回家自己教。 年輕的愛迪生對科學非常的著迷，他十歲的時候就建了自己的第一間化學實驗室。由於愛迪生無窮盡的精力和天賦, 終於在他的一生之中共有1300多項的發明。

愛迪生在發明電燈泡時，共試驗了2000次才成功。當一位年輕的人問他在失敗了這麼多次後有何感受時，他說：「我從未失敗過一次。我恰好是經歷了2000個階段之後才發明了燈泡。」

When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2,000 experiments before he got it to work. Someone asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, “I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process.”

When a reporter asked Thomas Edison how it felt to have failed 25,000 times in his effort to create a simple storage battery, his reply was, “I don’t know why you are calling it a failure. Today I know 25,000 ways not to make a battery. What do you know?”

當一位記者詢問愛迪生，有關發明簡易蓄電池期間曾失敗25000次時的感想，愛迪生回答說：「我不明白你為什麼要說這是失敗。現在我學到25000種不能製造蓄電池的方法；那你學到了些什麼？」

The evening of December 9, 1914, an explosion set fire to Edison’s scientific laboratory. At least ten buildings were destroyed, along with years of research and development. “There go all our mistakes,” Edison said as he watched the blaze. “Thank God we can start anew.” Three weeks after the fire, Edison managed to deliver his first phonograph.

1914年12月9日傍晚，爆炸意外使得愛迪生的實驗室被一場火災燒毀。這場大火至少燒毀十棟建築物，包括多年的研發心血。「我們所有的錯誤都成過去，」愛迪生看著大火這樣說。「感謝上帝，我們能夠重新再開始。」 大火的三個星期後，愛迪生就發明了首台留聲機。

Most of the reversals you and I face aren’t nearly as catastrophic, but they have two things in common with Edison’s inferno. First, they present us with a choice: How will we react to our change of circumstances? Second, depending on how we react, such changes inevitably change us for better or for worse.

Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It’s okay to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not growing.

你我面對的逆境大都不會如此嚴重，但它們和愛迪生遇到的大火有兩個共同點。一）無論情況如何，我們都面對一個選擇︰我們將如何應對環境的改變？二）按照我們的反應，這些改變必然會使我們變得更好、或更糟。 要從失敗中學習，然後，去迎接下一個挑戰。失敗乃平常事，你若不失敗，就不會成長。

雙語兒童的故事 - www.freekidstories.org

Text from “A Sower’s Seeds” and other sources. Art © The Family International/clipart