在这本温馨、励志、令人落泪的自传中，作者克里斯遭亲生父亲遗弃，继父更是脾气暴虐，克里斯发誓无论将来怎样，都要认真负责地抚养自己孩子长大成人。但克里斯所经历的一切艰难坎坷足以让任何人都意志动摇，在最困难时，他和牙牙学语的儿子无家可归，只能将仅有的财产背在背上，一手提着尿布，一手推着婴儿车，流浪街头，甚至寄宿于地铁站洗手间……但他始终没有放弃梦想，以幽默及毅力面对逆境，并凭借过人的智慧与勤恳的努力，终于迎来幸福的时刻——成为一名成功的股票经纪人。
    《当幸福来敲门（双语版）（中英对照）》是美国著名黑人投资专家克里斯·加德纳生平的真实写照，他用生命诠释了责任和奋斗以及如何去实现梦想，永不放弃梦想，永远奋力前行。书名中“Happyness”的拼写错误其实别具匠心，它暗指了书中一个非常重要的场景，读者可亲自揭开谜底。
    根据本书改编的同名电影是威尔·史密斯迄今为止口碑最佳的影片，也是IMDB和豆瓣上备受追捧的高分电影。

Prologue
Go ForwardWhenever I’m asked what exactly it was that helped guide me through my darkest days not only to survive but to move past those circumstances and to ultimately attain a level of success and fulfillment that once sounded impossible, what comes to mind are two events.

One of them took place in the early 1980s, when I was twenty-seven years old, on an unusually hot, sunny day in the Bay Area. In the terminally overcrowded parking lot outside of San Francisco General Hospital, just as I exited the building, a flash of the sun’s glare temporarily blocked my vision. As I refocused, what I saw changed the world as I knew it. At any other point in my life it wouldn’t have struck me so powerfully, but there was something about that moment in time and the gorgeous, red convertible Ferrari 308 that I saw slowly circling the lot—driven by a guy obviously in search of a parking spot—that compelled me to go and have a life-changing conversation with him.
　　
序言

奋力前行
　　
　　是什么指引着我走出生命中那段最为黑暗的日子，最后不仅侥幸得以生存，而且终获成功，实现自我？每当人们问及我这个问题时，我脑海里就会浮现出两幅场景。
　　
　　其一是在20世纪80年代初，当时我大概是27岁的样子，那天天气奇热，明晃晃的太阳悬在湾区上空，在旧金山总医院门口，黑压压停了一片车子。我刚走出大楼，迎面而来的耀眼阳光刺得我睁不开眼睛。定睛一看，眼前的一切让我从此改变了对世界的认识。若是换个时间地点，这件事对我的影响也许不至于此，但此时此刻它的发生，使我的生活截然两样。一辆火红惹眼的法拉利308敞篷车在前面的停车场缓缓驶过，显然是在找停车位，我鬼使神差地上前和车主攀谈起来，而那番话却就此改变了我的一生。
　　
Some years before, fresh out of the Navy, I had first arrived in San Francisco—lured to the West Coast by a prestigious research job and the opportunity to work for one of the top young heart surgeons in the country. For a kid like me who’d barely stepped foot outside the six-block square of the’hood in Milwaukee—not counting my three-year stint as a Navy medic in North Carolina—San Francisco was the be-all and end-all. The city was the Land of Milk and Honey and the Emerald City of Oz rolled into one. Rising up out of the bay into golden glowing mists of possibility, she seduced me from the start, showing off her studded hills and plunging valleys as she laid herself out with arms open. At night the town was an aphrodisiac—with city lights like rare jewels sparkling down from Nob Hill and Pacific Heights, through the better neighborhoods and along the rougher streets of the Mission and the Tenderloin (my new ’hood), spilling out of the towers of the Financial District and reflecting into the bay by Fisherman’s Wharf and the Marina.

In the early days, no matter how many times I drove west over the Bay Bridge from Oakland, or north from Daly City heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge, which stretches right up to the horizon before dropping down into Marin County, those views of San Francisco were like falling in love all over again. Even as time went by and I got hip to the weather—the periods of gray foggy skies alternating with days of bone-chilling rain—I’d wake up to one of those glorious, perfect San Francisco days and the beauty wiped away all memory of the gloom. San Francisco remains in my mind to this day the Paris of the Pacific.

Of course, back then, it didn’t take long to discover that she was also deceptive, not necessarily easy, sometimes coldhearted, and definitely not cheap. Between steep rents and the chronic car repairs caused by the toll the hills took on transmissions and brakes— not to mention that pile of unpaid parking tickets all too familiar to most San Franciscans—staying afloat could be a challenge. But that wasn’t going to mar my belief that I’d make it. Besides, I knew enough about challenge. I knew how to work hard, and in fact, over the next years, challenges helped me to reshape my dreams, to reach further, and to pursue goals with an increased sense of urgency.

In early 1981, when I became a first-time father, overjoyed as I was, that sense of urgency kicked up another notch. As the first months of my son’s life flew by, I not only tried to move ahead faster but also began to question the path that I’d chosen, wondering if somehow in all my efforts I wasn’t trying to run up the down escalator. Or at least that was my state of mind on that day in the parking lot outside San Francisco General Hospital as I approached the driver of the red Ferrari.
　　
　　几年前，我刚从海军退役下来，就来到了旧金山。深深吸引我的是在西海岸的那份优厚的研究工作，同时也因此有机会为当时美国一位顶级年轻心脏外科医师效力。那时我是个懵懵懂懂的毛头小伙，刚刚从威斯康星密尔沃基这种小地方走出来，全部资历不过是在北卡罗来纳州做过三年的海军军医而已。旧金山对我来说几乎是一辈子的终极梦想，因为这里可以说是应有尽有，充满冒险刺激。而对我这种毫无背景的普通百姓来说，这遍地黄金的大都市，从一开始就充满了诱惑，这里的山川幽谷，这里的每寸土地都让我无法抗拒。入夜，整个城市更是风情万种，从诺布山到太平洋高地，城市灯火宛如宝石般晶莹璀璨，从高档住宅区到贫困的教会区和田德隆区(也就是我在这里的栖身之地)都是如此，灯光从金融区的大厦流泻而下，从渔人码头到玛利那区无不在闪烁着温柔的光。

　　早些时候，不管我驾车从加州奥克兰朝着海湾大桥西行，还是从加州达利城到金门桥一路北上，每当看到金门桥拔地而起，与海峡那边的马林县玉带相连，无论多少次经过这里，旧金山的此情此景都会让我动容动情。即便是日子久了，有时赶上天公不作美，或是大雾弥漫，或是阴雨连绵，都不会影响我欣赏旧金山的曼妙之美，大自然的妙笔自会抹去心中的阴霾。时至今日，旧金山在我心中都永远可与名城巴黎齐名媲美。

　　当然，即便在那时，我也很快发现这座城市有它冷漠的一面，而且，想在这里生存下来实属不易。高昂的房租、修车费用以及在山间穿行停停走走一路交的过路费，更别提所有旧金山人都司空见惯的成堆的停车罚单，想在这里落脚绝非易事。但是，所有这些都无法动摇我在这里活下去的决心。再说，困难对我而言并不新鲜，我知道自己该怎么去努力，实际上，在接下来的几年间，正是因为困难和挑战，我才在梦想的道路上走得更远，更具紧迫感，积极实现个人的目标。

　　1981年初，我初为人父，在乐不可支的同时，我更觉得要加紧努力。儿子来到世上的头几个月很快就过去了，我自己也奋力向前，拼命工作，但不免也开始心存疑虑，自己选择的这条路是否正确？所付出的一切会不会灰飞烟灭? 至少，当我在旧金山总医院门口，上前去和法拉利车主搭讪的时候，我就是这么想的。
　　
This encounter would crystallize in my memory—almost into a mythological moment that I could return to and visit in the present tense whenever I wanted or needed its message. I see the sports car in front of me just as if it’s today, circling in slow motion, with the whirring sound of that unbelievably powerful engine as it idles, waiting and purring like a lion about to pounce. In my mind’s ear, I’m hearing the cool calling of a horn blown by Miles Davis, my musical hero—who, back in the day, I was positive I was going to be when I grew up. It’s one of those imagined senses in the sound track of our lives that tells us to pay attention.

With the top down and the light glinting fire-engine-metallic-red off the hood, the guy at the wheel is every bit as cool as the jazz musicians I used to idolize. A white guy, dark-haired, clean-shaven, of average height and slight build, he’s wearing the sharpest suit, possibly custom-made, out of a beautiful piece of cloth. It’s more than just a wonderful garment, it’s the whole look—the tasteful tie, the muted shirt, the pocket square, the understated cuff links and watch. Nothing obnoxious, just well put together. No flash, no bullshit. Just sharp.
　　
“Hey, man,” I say, approaching the Ferrari and waving at him as I point out where my car is parked, nodding to let him know that I’m coming out. Am I seduced by the Ferrari itself ? Yes. I am a red-blooded American male. But it’s more than that. In that instant, the car symbolizes all that I lacked while growing up—freedom, escape, options. “You can have my spot,” I offer, “but I gotta ask you a couple of questions.”
　　
He gets that I’m offering a trade here—my parking place for his information. In my twenty-seven years of life so far, I have learned a little already about the power of information and about the kind of currency that information can become. Now I see an opportunity to get some inside information, I think, and so I draw out my trusty sword—a compulsion for question-asking that has been in my survival kit since childhood.
　　
Seeing that it’s not a bad deal for either of us, he shrugs and says, “Fine.”
　　
My questions are very simple: “What do you do?” and “How do you do it?”
　　
With a laugh, he answers the first question just as simply, saying, “I’m a stockbroker,”
but to answer the second question we extend the conversation to a meeting a few weeks later and then a subsequent introduction to the ABCs, of Wall Street, an entirely foreign but mesmerizing venue where I am just crazy enough to think I could do what he and others like him do, if only I can find an opening.
　　
Despite the fact that I had absolutely no experience and no contacts whatsoever, looking to get my big break into the stock market became a major focus over the next several months, but so did other urgent concerns, especially when I suddenly became a single parent amid a series of other unforeseen, tumultuous events.
　　
　　这次邂逅在我脑海中仿佛生了根，每当我回顾那一刻，当时的场景就会历历在目。我甚至可以看到那辆跑车就在自己面前，仿佛就是在此时此刻，车子缓缓地兜着圈子，我可以清楚听到法拉利强劲有力的马达怠速时的嗡嗡声，那种感觉就像是狮子准备扑向猎物前的喉鸣。我似乎还能听到偶像迈尔?戴维斯的爵士小号在耳畔响起(小时候，我还一度梦想长大后成为戴维斯那样的人物)。其实我们有时确实会有这样的感觉，让我们预感到一些重要事情即将发生。

　　法拉利通体火红，红得耀眼，红得闪亮，开车的家伙酷味儿十足，完全可以与我曾崇拜的爵士音乐家一争高下。他皮肤白净，暗色的头发，胡子刮得干干净净，中等身材，体态匀称，衣着相当考究，很可能是为他度身定制，用料更是上乘。其实他不仅仅是衣着考究这么简单，从着装搭配来看，此人就绝非等闲之辈，领带相当有品位，条纹衬衫，装饰方巾，低调的袖扣和腕表，华丽自在而绝无张扬之感。

　　“你好啊！”我边打招呼，边凑上前去，挥着手，指向我停车的地方，示意他我要离开了。我这么做是因为法拉利的诱惑难以抗拒？确实，我也是血性男儿，有着七情六欲，但问题似乎并非如此简单。此时此刻，法拉利代表的正是我所一直或缺的东西—— 自由自在、浪迹天涯和无尽选择。我接着说道：“你可以停在我的位置上，不过我想请教你两个问题。”

　　他意识到我是有条件的，用停车位来换问题的答案。在我活在世上的这27年间，我对知识的魔力还是略知一二的，也知道知识有时就能变成亮闪闪的真金白银。现在机会来了，很有可能我会问出一些绝对内幕消息，所以我亮出自己的绝密武器—— 打破沙锅问到底，这是我自孩提起就屡试不爽的独门秘笈。

　　也许觉得这个提议对两人都算不错，他耸耸肩，应了下来。

　　我的问题很简单：“你是以什么为业的？”再有就是，“怎么才能做到如此成功？”

　　他不禁乐出了声，第一个问题他答得十分干脆、简单：“股票经纪人”。但要说清楚第二个问题还真费了番工夫，以至于几周后，我们又见了面，接下来他还给我介绍了华尔街的一些基本情况，这地方对我而言绝对陌生却充满神奇，我当时竟然不知天高地厚地想，自己和他们这些专业人士一样也能在华尔街干出点名堂来，只要能给我个机会。

　　虽然我在证券方面没有丝毫经验可谈，而且从未接触过这个行当，但我在接下来的几个月中，梦寐以求的就是挤入证券市场，而这期间，需要应对的还有更多棘手的问题，特别是突然间自己成了单身父亲，还有很多当时无法预见的生活动荡。
　　
By this time period, San Francisco’s conflicting attitudes toward a growing homeless population were already well known. What officials declared was a new epidemic in homelessness had actually been developing for more than a decade as the result of several factors—including drastic cutbacks to state funding for mental health facilities, limited treatment options for the large number of Vietnam vets suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome and alcohol and drug addiction, along with the same urban ills plaguing the rest of the country. During the long, cold winter of 1982, as government programs to help the poor were being eliminated, the economy in the Bay Area, as in the rest of the country, was in a downturn. At a time when jobs and affordable housing were becoming harder to find, access to cheap street drugs like angel dust and PCP was starting to get easier.
　　
Though some business leaders complained that the homeless would scare tourists away, if you happened to visit San Francisco in the early 1980s, you were probably unaware of the deepening crisis. You might have heard about what neighborhoods to avoid—areas where you were warned about the winos, junkies, bag ladies, transients, and others who, as they used to say in my part of Milwaukee, “just went crazy.” Or maybe you did notice some of the signs—the long food lines, multiplying numbers of panhandlers, the mothers and children on the steps of overcapacity shelters, runaway teenagers, or those sleeping human forms that sometimes looked more like mounds of discarded clothing left in alleys, on park benches, at transit stations, and under the eaves and in the doorways of buildings. Maybe your visit to San Francisco reminded you of similar problems in your hometown, or maybe even alerted you to the increasing percentage of the working poor who’d entered the ranks of the homeless—gainfully employed but overburdened individuals and families forced to choose between paying rent and buying food, medicine, clothing, or other basic necessities. You may have paused to wonder what kinds of lives and dreams and stories had been lived before, and perhaps to consider how easy it would be for anyone to fall through the cracks of whatever support had once existed, or to face a sudden crisis of any proportion and simply stumble into the hole of homelessness.
　　
　　此时的旧金山对待无家可归的人群存在着相当矛盾的态度，这已是人所共知。政府称无家可归问题是新出现的城市顽疾。其实不然，这一问题存在已有十年之久，主要是由于精神疾患治疗设施的州拨款大幅缩水，战后大量越南老兵的创伤后压力心理障碍症导致酗酒吸毒，却未得到有效救治，其实这并不仅只限于老兵，酗酒吸毒在全国各个城市屡见不鲜。1982年那个漫长的寒冬，当政府宣布取消其贫民救助计划时，与国内其他地区一样，湾区的经济形势一路走低。这时，找份活干，找间房住，已经日益艰难，倒是要搞到天使粉、普斯普剂这类便宜的街边毒品要容易得多。

　　虽然有些商业人士认为无家可归者有碍市容，影响旅游业，遂对此颇有怨言，但如果你有幸在20世纪80年代初去过旧金山，可能还不会感受到那里有着如此深层次的危机。可能会有人告诫你有些地方不要去，说是醉汉、地痞、流浪女、流浪汉，还有些疯疯癫癫的人在那经常出没，在老家明尼苏达密尔沃基把这些人叫做“神经病”。或许你会注意到一些迹象，领取救济食品的人排起了长队，街头行乞的人数多了很多，母亲带着大大小小的孩子挤在窝棚里艰难度日，十几岁的孩子离家出走，露宿在街边的人蜷缩着身体更像是一堆被随意丢弃的垃圾，公园长椅上，车辆换乘站里，楼房的门廊下，都可以成为这些人暂时的栖身之地。也许，在你自己的城市里也存在类似于旧金山的这类问题，也许你意识到有更多的工作族正步入无家可归者的行列，他们确实有所收入，但不堪重负，在支付房租和购买食品、药品、衣物等生活所需之间艰难做出选择。也许你会思忖，他们曾是怎样的生活和度日，他们曾怀揣着怎样的梦想，也许你会想到如果生活的支撑一旦化为乌有，任何人都会垮掉；一场飞来横祸足以使人陷入困境，从此过上入不敷出、朝不保夕的生活。

Chances are, however, no matter how observant you might have been, you wouldn’t have noticed me. Or if you did happen to spot me, usually moving at a fast clip as I pushed a lightweight, rickety blue stroller that had become my only wheels and that carried my most precious cargo in the universe—my nineteen-month-old son, Chris Jr., a beautiful, growing, active, alert, talkative, hungry toddler—it’s unlikely you would have suspected that my baby and I were homeless. Dressed in one of my two business suits, the other in the garment bag that was slung over my shoulder, along with the duffel bag that was filled with all our other earthly possessions (including various articles of clothing, toiletries, and the few books I couldn’t live without), as I tried to hold an umbrella in one hand, a briefcase in another, and balance the world’s largest box of Pampers under my armpit, still while maneuvering the stroller, we probably looked more like we were going off on a long weekend somewhere. Some of the places where we slept suggested as much—on the Bay Area Rapid Transit subway trains, or in waiting areas at either the Oakland or San Francisco airport. Then again, the more hidden places where we stayed could have given away my situation—at the office, where I’d work late so we could stretch out on the floor under my desk after hours; or, as on occasion we found ourselves, in the public bathroom of an Oakland BART station.
　　
That small, cell-like, windowless tiled box—big enough for us, our stuff, and a toilet and a sink where I could get us washed as best I could—represented both my worst nightmare of being confined, locked up, and excluded and, at the same time, a true godsend of protection where I could lock the door and keep the wolves out. It was what it was—a way station between where I’d come from and where I was going, my version of a pit stop on the underground railroad, ’80s style.
　　
As long as I kept my mental focus on destinations that were ahead, destinations that I had the audacity to dream might hold a red Ferrari of my own, I protected myself from despair. The future was uncertain, absolutely, and there were many hurdles, twists, and turns to come, but as long as I kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, the voices of fear and shame, the messages from those who wanted me to believe that I wasn’t good enough, would be stilled.
　　
Go forward. That became my mantra, inspired by the Reverend Cecil Williams, one of the most enlightened men to ever walk this earth, a friend and mentor whose goodness blessed me in ways I can never sufficiently recount. At Glide Memorial Methodist Church in the Tenderloin—where the Reverend Williams fed, housed, and repaired souls (eventually accommodating thousands of homeless in what became the first homeless hotel in the country)—he was already an icon. Then and later, you couldn’t live in the Bay Area without knowing Cecil Williams and getting a sense of his message. Walk that walk, he preached. On any Sunday, his sermon might address a number of subjects, but that theme was always in there, in addition to the rest. Walk that walk and go forward all the time. Don’t just talk that talk, walk it and go forward. Also, the walk didn’t have to be long strides; baby steps counted too. Go forward.

　　无论你对生活的观察多么细致入微，你也许都不会注意到我的存在。也许会碰巧瞟上一眼，看到我步履匆匆，手推一辆轻便的破烂蓝色儿童推车，这在当时是我唯一的运输工具，装着我世间最珍贵的宝贝—— 一岁半的俊俏儿子小克里斯多夫，他活蹦乱跳，机灵淘气，还在牙牙学语就已喋喋不休，时不时向我索取食物。你可能做梦也想不到我们爷儿俩已经无家可归。我身着职业装，这行头我总共不过才有两套，另一套就塞在我肩扛的衣物袋里面，还有个袋子里面装着我们的值钱家当(杂七杂八几件衣物、卫生用具，还有几本书，没有这些书我就没法活下去)。我一手提了把伞，另一只手还要拎着公文包，腋下还要夹上硕大的一包帮宝适纸尿裤，同时还要控制婴儿推车，看上去我们俩就像是去什么地方度周末长假一般。我和儿子经常过夜的地方就是在湾区地铁换乘站，再有就是奥克兰或旧金山机场的候机大厅，还有个更为隐蔽的藏身之处就是我的办公室，我经常刻意加班，下班后就可以在办公桌下的地板上舒展腿脚，当然有时候也要躲进奥克兰捷运车站的公共卫生间暂避风雨。

　　那个小小的卫生间，虽说没有窗户，但是大小还算合适，放下我们两个还有这些行李都不成问题，再加上马桶和洗手池，足够我们梳洗之用。那里虽然让我感觉到压抑束缚，但是锁上门，与外界隔绝，至少不会有什么猛兽闯进来，也算是上苍赐予的安全所在。这就是我在20世纪80年代的生活写照，那时我也处于生活的中转站，连接我的过去和未来，仿佛就是在人生的地铁站。

　　只要我还坚持朝着前方的梦想前进，梦想自己有朝一日也能开上红色法拉利，我就不能让自己倒下。未来会怎样，谁都不知道，纵然会有诸多坎坷和羁绊，但只要我是一直在一步一个脚印奋力向前，所有那些恐惧和羞耻，所有那些对我能力的质疑，都会烟消云散，不复存在。

　　奋力向前，就是一直激励我的信条，这是世上最伟大的威廉姆斯教士对我的告诫，他是我的挚友和恩师，他对我善意的帮助不一而足。在旧金山田德隆区的格莱德教堂，就是威廉姆斯教士生活和居住的寓所，他在那里尽心尽责地帮助穷人，并为成千上万无家可归的人提供衣食住所，这里也成为美国第一家穷人旅馆，他已成为众人心中的偶像。在那之后，在湾区无人不知威廉姆斯教士，大家都不同程度受到他思想的鼓舞。他告诉我们要奋力向前，永不放弃。在礼拜日，他的讲道可能会涉及诸多话题，但却有着亘古不变的主题—— 永不言弃，奋斗不息，这不只是言谈，而是要身体力行，抑或，不一定总要大踏步前进，积跬步同样也能至千里，只要一直向前。
　　
The phrases repeated in my brain until they were a wordless skat, like the three-beat staccato sound as we rode the train over the BART rails, or like the clack-clack-clack syncopation of the stroller wheels with percussion added from the occasional creaks and squeals and groans they made going over curbs, up and down San Francisco’s famed steep hills, and around corners.
　　
In years to come, baby carriages would go way high-tech with double and triple wheels on each side and all aerodynamic, streamlined, and leather-cushioned, plus extra compartments for storing stuff and roofs to add on to make them like little inhabitable igloos. But the rickety blue stroller I had, as we forged into the winter of 1982, had none of that. What it did have—during what I’m sure had to be the wettest, coldest winter on record in San Francisco—was a sort of pup tent over Chris Jr. that I made of free plastic sheeting from the dry cleaners.
　　
As much as I kept going forward because I believed a better future lay ahead, and as much as I was sure that the encounter outside San Francisco General Hospital had steered me to that future, the real driving force came from that other pivotal event in my life—which had taken place back in Milwaukee in March 1970, on a day not long after my sixteenth birthday.
　　
Unlike many experiences in childhood that tended to blur in my memory into a series of images that flickered dimly like grainy, old-fashioned moving pictures, this event—which
must have taken up little more than a split second of time—became a vivid reality that I could conjure in my senses whenever I wanted, in perfectly preserved detail.
　　
This period was one of the most volatile of my youth, beyond the public turbulence of the era—the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, echoes of assassinations and riots, and the cultural influences of music, hippies, black power, and political activism, all of which helped to shape my view of myself, my country, and the world.
　　
During my childhood and adolescence, my family—consisting of my three sisters and me, our mother, who was present in my early life only sporadically, and our stepfather—
had lived in a series of houses, walk-ups, and flats, punctuated by intermittent separations and stays with a series of relatives, all within a four-block area. Finally, we had moved into a small house in a neighborhood considered to be somewhat upwardly mobile. It may have only been so in comparison to where we’d been living before, but this house was nonetheless “movin’ on up”—à la the Jefferson family, who still had another five years to go to get their own TV show.
　　
The TV on this particular day was, in fact, the focus of my attention, and key to my mood of happy expectation, not only because I was getting ready to watch the last of the two games played in the NCAA’s Final Four, but because I had the living room all to myself. This meant that I could hoot and holler all I wanted, and that I could talk out loud to myself if I so pleased, and answer myself right back. (My mother had this habit too. When others asked what she was doing, she’d always say, “Talking to someone with good sense.”)

　　这些话一次次在我的脑海中浮现，一下下敲入我的内心深处，仿佛列车行进时候的滚滚车轮声，又像旧金山街头孩子们玩的轮滑鞋，在街头巷陌间躲闪腾挪时发出的声响，显得铿锵有力，掷地有声。

　　这些年来，婴儿车的种类也在不断翻新，融入了很多高科技成分，每侧双轮甚至三轮的都有，还有气动式、流线型，加入皮垫、配上遮阳篷不一而足，再加上储物空间，看上去活像个爱斯基摩小屋。但是我在1982年冬天用的那个破烂不堪的蓝色婴儿推车却没有这些新鲜玩艺儿，然而它却经历了旧金山有史以来最为寒冷的冬天，小克里斯头顶上只有个简易帐篷为他遮风挡雨，那还是我从干洗店要了块塑料布给他做的。

　　我步履维艰，尽力前行，因为相信更美好的明天在前方等着我们，而且我还坚信，旧金山总医院门前的那次邂逅就是在为我指明前行的方向。此外，还有件事给我留下了难以磨灭的印象，那是在1970年3月，我刚过完16岁生日不久，那时我还在威斯康星的密尔沃基。

　　与许多童年时的残破记忆不同，那些记忆由于时间久远，已经变得模糊不清，仿佛老式电影一般，图像不再清晰可见。而这件事却大不相同，仿佛是用胶片高速录制而成，每当我想起来，那每个细节都是真真切切，栩栩如生地浮现在眼前。

　　这是我年轻时经历的非常动荡的一段时期，恰逢乱世，越战、民权运动、刺杀暴乱频频，文化方面，音乐、嬉皮士、黑人运动、政治行动主义等大行其道，所有这些都促成我对自身、对国家和世界形成自己的观点和看法。

　　在我孩提时代和青少年时代，家里有三个姐妹、我，还有母亲，母亲在我幼时的记忆里时断时续，再有就是继父，我们搬过很多次家，地下室、公寓，有时一家人还不得不分开，临时寄宿到亲戚家里，但都不过是在四个街区的范围内活动。最终，我们有幸搬到附近的一所小房子里，境遇算是有所改善。但所谓改善也仅仅是和我们以前的居住条件相比而言，在这里过了5年后，我们才有了自家的电视机。

　　在这个特殊的时期，我在电视上倾注了自己全部精力，电视是我快乐的源泉，不仅是要眼巴巴盼着美国NCAA大学篮球四强赛，更重要的是整个客厅都是我的天下，挑台选台随心所欲，如果我愿意，都可以大声自言自语，自问自答(妈妈也有这个习惯，当别人问起她时，她总是说自己是在自得其乐)。
　　
Another cause for feeling good that day was that my mother happened to be the only other person at home. Even if she wasn’t sitting down beside me to watch the game but was somewhere nearby—busy ironing clothes in the adjacent dining room, as it so happened—
it was as if the house was breathing a sigh of relief for just the two of us to be there, something that almost never occurred, especially without my stepfather’s menacing presence.
　　
March Madness, which came every year at the end of the college basketball season, was always thrilling for me, and an excellent distraction from heavier thoughts I was having about the tightrope I was walking from the end of adolescence into manhood. The tournament was always full of surprises, Cinderella stories, and human drama, starting with the nation’s sixty-four top teams in thirty-two matchups as they rapidly whittled down to the Sweet Sixteen, then the Elite Eight, and ended up with the two games of the Final Four before the winners played for the championship title. All eyes this year were on how UCLA would fare in its first season without seven-footer Lew Alcindor (soon to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) after he had led them to three consecutive titles. The team that seemed destined to make sure UCLA didn’t go home with the championship this year was Jacksonville University, a heretofore unknown college program that boasted not one but two stars, Artis Gilmore and Pembrook Burrows III, both over seven feet tall. It was unusual enough at this time for players to hit the seven-foot mark, let alone to have two of them on the same team.
　　
Known as the original Twin Towers, or sometimes the Towers of Power, Gilmore and Burrows had helped Jacksonville obliterate their opposition and had brought them to the Final Four to face St. Bonaventure. As time for the tip-off neared, the excitement was only heightened by the announcers’ predictions about the careers and riches awaiting the two giants in the NBA or the ABA.
　　
As it happened, Jacksonville would win the game and then lose the championship to UCLA after all. And Artis Gilmore would go on to success in the NBA while Pembrook Burrows would be drafted by Seattle before turning to a career as a Florida Highway Patrol officer.
　　
None of that is of any consequence as I’m sitting there, so engrossed in anticipation of the tip-off and so very caught up in the announcers’ hype of both the athletic ability and fortune awaiting Gilmore and Burrows that I say out loud to no one, “Wow, one day those guys are gonna make a million dollars!”
　　
Moms, standing at the ironing board just behind me in the next room, says very clearly, as though she has been sitting next to me the whole time, “Son, if you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.”
　　
　　那天感觉良好的另一个原因是恰好只有妈妈和我在家，即便是她没有坐在我身边陪我看比赛，但她就在屋里屋外忙忙碌碌，比如在一旁的厨房熨衣服之类，现在她正忙乎这些事情，家里只有我们俩让人感到无比轻松惬意，这种时候很少有过，特别是凶巴巴的继父在家时，更不可能。

　　每到“三月疯狂”，也就是每年大学篮球赛季的尾声，都让我兴奋不已，也只有这时我才能从沉重的思想包袱下分神出来，得以片刻喘息，此时的我正处于青少年到成年的转型期，如履薄冰。联赛自然异彩纷呈，惊喜不断，灰姑娘一夜成名这类人间悲喜剧竞相上映。从全国64支顶级球队中选出32强，继而产生16强，然后进军8强，最终4强赛打响，胜出的两支球队争夺最后的冠军称号。那年所有人都在关注加州大学洛杉矶分校，想知道在卢?阿尔辛多(也就是后来在NBA征战20载的阿卜杜勒?贾巴尔)缺席的情况下，该队如何拿下第一赛季，要知道阿尔辛多带领校队已连续三个赛季捧得总冠军的殊荣。 杰克森维尔大学的出现似乎让加州大学洛杉矶分校该年度注定与冠军无缘，前者本来名不见经传，结果却出了两名球星：阿提斯?葛尔莫和彭鲁克?巴罗斯三世，两人都有7英尺高，那年月有一名7英尺的队员应属不易，更不敢想能有两名这样的队员同时为同一球队效力。

　　葛尔莫和巴罗斯被誉为“双子塔”，也有人称之为“大力双塔”，两人联手，为杰克森维尔大学重写历史屡建奇功，让该队破天荒的首次闯入四强赛，与圣文德大学狭路相逢，一决高下。开赛之前，解说员预言“双子塔”会在NBA或ABA职业篮球联盟大展宏图，这更让赛场一片沸腾。

　　后来，杰克森维尔大学果真赢得比赛，但是在接下来的总决赛中不敌加州大学洛杉矶分校，从而与冠军无缘。葛尔莫果然如愿进入NBA续写他的辉煌，而巴罗斯却去了西雅图，后来成了佛罗里达的一名高速公路巡警。

　　但当我在电视机前聚精会神看比赛时，所有这些后来发生的事情自然不得而知，只是听了解说员在开赛前的煽情预言，想到“双子塔”的惊人天赋和等待他们的大笔财富就让我兴奋不已，忘乎所以地大喊：“这俩家伙迟早要拿到100万！”

　　妈妈在我身后的另一间屋子里，正站在熨衣板前面，她异常肯定地告诉我，那口气仿佛是她就一直坐在我身边没离开过半步：“儿子，如果你愿意，有朝一日你也能挣到100百万。”
　　
　　
Stunned, I allow her pronouncement to seep in, without responding. No response is necessary, as Bettye Jean Triplett née Gardner has gone on record with a statement of fact, not to be questioned, or responded to. It is as factual as if one would say on Friday that “tomorrow is Saturday.”
　　
It was biblical, one of the ten commandments handed down from God to Momma: “If you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.”
　　
All in an instant my world turned inside out. In 1970 the only way a kid from the ghetto like me had a chance to go make a million dollars was if he could sing, dance, run, jump, catch balls, or deal drugs. I could not sing. I am still the only black man in America that cannot dance or play ball. And it was my Momma who’d set me straight about becoming Miles Davis.
　　
“Chris,” she had said after hearing me say how I was going to be him one too many times, “you can’t be Miles Davis because he already got that job.” I had understood from then on that my job was to be Chris Gardner—whatever that was going to entail.
　　
Now she had told me, and I was sixteen years old and I believed her, that my job could be to make a million dollars—if I wanted to. The amount of the money wasn’t what mattered when Moms said it; the operative part of her message was that if I wanted to do something, whatever it was, I could.
　　
I not only believed her then, at age sixteen, but I continued to believe that statement in all the days that followed, including that fateful day in San Francisco when I got the first inkling of a future in Wall Street, and in those moments pushing up the hills in the downpour
with my son looking up at me from his stroller through rain-splattered dry-cleaning plastic, and in the desolate hours when the only place of refuge was in a BART station bathroom.
　　
It was only later in my adulthood, after those days of wandering in the desert of homelessness, believing in the promised land my mother had told me about and then finding it, and only after generating many millions of dollars, that I understood why these two events were both so essential to my eventual success. The encounter with the driver of the red Ferrari showed me the way to discovering what the arena was in which I could apply myself and also to learning how to do that. But it was my mother’s earlier pronouncement that had planted the belief in me that I could attain whatever goals I set for myself.
　　
Only after looking as deeply as I could into my mother’s life was I able to fully understand why she said those words to me at the time that she did. By recognizing the disappointments that happened in her life before and after I came along, I was able to see that, though too many of her dreams had been crushed, by daring me to dream she was being given another chance.
　　
　　我一时语塞，怔怔地听她说完每个字，其实当时我没有回过神也是正常的，因为母亲贝蒂?让?崔普雷特曾这样说过，事实就是事实，无需质疑和回应。这就是个简单的事实，就像今天是周五，没人会去证明明天会是周六一样。

　　这句话本身宛若《圣经》一般，就像十诫从上帝传至母亲之手，“如果你愿意，有朝一日你也能挣到一百万。”

　　也就在那一瞬间，我的世界发生了天翻地覆的变化。1970年，像我这样生活在贫民区的孩子若想挣到一百万，那就得能歌善舞，要么能跑会跳，再么球艺高超，实在不行就只能贩卖毒品。我一没有天生的好嗓子，估计也是全美国唯一不会跳舞不善踢球的黑人，也就是因为妈妈，我痛下决心，一心想成为迈尔?戴维斯那样的爵士大师。

　　当她无数次地听我说要当迈尔?戴维斯爵士大师之后，她说：“克里斯，你不可能成为戴维斯，因为他自己已经成功做到了。”之后，我终于明白，我只能做好克里斯?加纳，具体怎样只能靠自己了。

　　而在我满16岁的时候，在我对她笃信无疑时，她告诉我，我也能挣到一百万，前提是只要我自己愿意。倒不是这笔钱对我有多么重要，重要的是她说我只要想做什么，我就能做得到。

　　我不仅在16岁的时候对妈妈的话深信不疑，在之后的日子里也同样如此，包括在旧金山那次命中注定的邂逅让我对华尔街产生非分之想时；在大雨滂沱中，我推着婴儿车艰难前行，儿子透过我用塑料布自制的简易遮雨篷眼巴巴地望着我时；当我孤立无援，只能在捷运车站的卫生间勉强过夜时，我都没有对母亲说过的话产生丝毫怀疑。

　　也就在我成年后，才意识到经过那些无家可归的日日夜夜，而始终坚信母亲对我当初的承诺，以及后来我努力兑现这种承诺，这一切才更具意义，也只有在自己真的有数百万美金进账时，我方才明白这两件事其实对于我之后的成功意义非凡。邂逅法拉利车主让我明白该在哪个领域去实现个人的发展，以及如何去发展，但是更早些时候，母亲对我的断言，让我根深蒂固地相信，只要我努力，自己设定的目标终将会实现。

　　只有尽可能深入地了解了母亲这一生，我才可能完全理解她当时为何会对我说出这番话来。通过了解她前前后后所经历的失意和痛苦，我才意识到她自己的梦想曾一次次的破灭。而让我敢于梦想，才又给了她重温旧梦的机会。
　　
To fully answer the question of what it was that guided me through and became the secret to the success that followed, I had to go back to my own childhood and take the journey back to where my mother came from—in order to understand at last how that fire to dream got lit in me.
　　My story is hers.
　　
　　究竟是什么指引我走出生命中的低谷，而且终获成功，要回答这个问题，就要从我孩提时候说起，还要谈及母亲出生的地方，因为只有这样才能真正了解是什么最后点燃我的梦想，并指引我一直前行。

　　我们的命运紧密相连，我的故事也就是她的故事。

    克里斯·加德纳（Chris Gardner），作者1954年生于威斯康星州密尔沃基市的一个贫寒之家。高中毕业后应征入伍，成为一名实习医师。退伍后进入加州大学医疗中心担任助手职务。1976年，他在旧金山一个医学实验室担任主管，并与他人合著了多篇文章发表在医学杂志上。一个偶然的机会，他决定放弃从医，转而进入收入丰厚的财经领域。凭借自身的努力，没有经验、没有大学教育、没有人际关系的加德纳获得了在Dean Witter Reynolds证券经纪人公司的实习机会，自此进入证券业，并成为华尔街成功的证券投资商。1987年，他在芝加哥创办了自己的经纪公司，成为百万富翁，近年致力在南非扶贫。
    米拉，曾为自由职业翻译，为中央电视台、赛迪网、清华大学出版社、中国少年儿童出版社等多家影视传媒及出版机构翻译作品，涉及自美国CBS、日本NHK、英国BBC等进口的纪录片、电视剧、专题片的译制，具体包括音乐、体育、汽车、IT等多类题材。现在某世界500强企业任职。

第一部
第一章 糖果
第二章 渴望父爱
第三章 妈妈在哪里
第四章 即兴精酿（上）
第五章 即兴精酿（下）

第二部
第六章 外面的世界
第七章 生活的影像
第八章 人生的抉择（上）
第九章 人生的抉择（下）
第十章 加州的梦想

第三部
第十一章 贫民区的玫瑰
第十二章 圈子
尾声 祝福永存

    他同意了，我起身告退，飞奔出来，跑到车旁，从风挡雨刷上扯掉违章停车罚单，然后一股脑就开到硅谷，我本该到那里去接帕特里克去取些款项。忙乱之中竟然忘记把从添患、潘恩·韦伯、赫顿这些证券公司收集到的年报藏起来了，就任它们赫赫然躺在车里副驾驶的座位上。
    就在帕特里克上车的那一瞬间，我才意识到出问题了。内心极其惶恐，但又故作镇定，在我伸手准备把文件拿过来时，他厉声喝道：“克里斯？”
    “嗯……”我答应着，自己悔得肠子都青了。
    帕特里克瞅着我，疑惑地问：“你要开股票账户吗？”
    “是的……”我回答，尽量做出一幅若无其事的样子，心里多少感到有了一丝挽回的余地，“是啊，我正在考虑开个户头。”
    可是他却不买我的账，露出一幅古怪的神态，还咔哒了一下钢笔。接下来的几天里，富兰克开始对我严加看管。虽然他不可能知道我在其他公司里进行面试，但显然他已开始对我有所怀疑，尤其当他发现我一直在取消约会并为私事而屡屡迟到时，则更是如此。
    不仅如此，杰姬还一直给我泼冷水，觉得我梦想在华尔街获得成功只是自己的一厢情愿罢了。但她的观点缺乏说服力：“在那里做事的人，难道都和你一样没上过MBA吗？”
    无论我怎么反反复复解释接受培训并不一定需要硕士学位，她都不愿相信这一点，反而说她在这个公司的朋友有MBA学位，她朋友的老公在那个公司也有MBA学位。“克里斯，你连学士学位都没有，难道为进那一行不考个什么学位吗？”这又是关于文凭的争吵，“你没有毕业证。”这就是和我一起生活的女人，我儿子的母亲对我的看法。等着瞧着吧，我不断地承诺。我会干上这一行的。我就是喜欢它，喜欢它的味道，还有它的气息。即便如此，但由于长时间以来我们手头一直很紧，那个爱尔兰小侏儒总是盯着我，还有杰姬每天忧心忡忡，所以我明白自己不得不做出些让步。退一步，海阔天空。
    正当我一筹莫展的时候，赫顿公司的复试通知如雪中送炭般及时而至，和分公司经理聊了一会儿之后，他并未拒绝我，而是说：“我们会给你一次试用的机会。”
    ……