Dear Dr. Marshall,
Hi! I am a reader from China. I don't know whether you will read this letter. If it’s lucky enough to be read, I hope it won’t cost you too much time. I am writing to share my feelings with you after reading your book Nonviolent Communication in Chinese version. I really need someone to talk with and I believe that you can totally understand me.
Spending 5 days in reading your book carefully, I tried to comprehend the words, feel the person's feelings in the cases and rethink my way to communicate with others and myself. I gradually began to understand why people have different complicated feelings like loss, clash, depression and self-accusation etc. Such kind of feelings have been confusing me to feel the brightness of the sunlight, the coolness of the refreshing wind, the pureness of the moonlight. I don't know how to be happy. I forget to smile, I am afraid to communicate with others. I am afraid to be hurt..... I used to hold the thought that I may need to spend a whole life to figure out who I am and what I want because there's a saying goes," people may not even know themselves well in their lifetime." Luckily, the point in the book that abstract expression stop us from self-cognition and communication reminds me of knowing myself could just start from now on. Nonviolent Communication helps me to find a way to understand what I did before and forgive myself of not being perfect.
In order to feel happy, I start to listen to the voice in my heart and manage to know the need inside as far as I can. Trying to talk with myself peacefully, I found out why I am confused and why I always feel tired when being with others. I have been neglecting my own need all the time but just trying to be an understanding friends, well-behaved child and diligent worker so that people would be happy and love me. Thus, I didn’t express my own thoughts, I would do everything my parents asked, I didn’t reject the mission which were out of my responsibilities. I spared no effort to meet the needs of everyone around me. I had to do that or people would be disappointed and that was what I didn’t want to see. But I was really tired and unhappy. As time goes by, I lost my own voice, I can’t feel truly happy and even worse I have became some kind of cold-hearted. The worst thing is I don’t know how to trust others. Trusting others making me feel unsafe. You know it’s so hard to go through the life without any true feelings and pure care. I need to be honest to myself, the inner voice answer me that this is not the life I want to live, this is not the one I want to be. So what kind of life do you want to live and who do you want to be? I keep asking. Not so clear but at least I hope I won’t be that yellow-bellied as before. I am dare to face my heart and express my feelings when I need to. Try to control my temper and learn to listen to others with my whole heart without any judgement. Setting specific goals I want to achieve, making detail plans and take actions as far as I can in my daily life like loosing weight by taking exercises everyday or saving money to travel somewhere new.
Life is not that hard as I thought before and trusting people is not that horrible. I don’t want to miss out those beautiful moments in life due to my bad mood. I want to experience more wonderful things and meet more people to share happiness together. I want to be strong no matter what I have encountered with. I don’t want to be regretful for not being a dare one to do things I want and keep confused in my life. Thank you Dr. Marshall of showing us a peaceful way to understand ourselves and feel love. Thank you very much for listening to me. I wish you happy everyday!
Yours sincere,
《致马歇尔博士的一封信》
尊敬的马歇尔博士：
你好！我是来自中国的读者。不知道你会否读到这封信，如果有幸能被你读到，希望不会占用你太多时间。我想和你分享拜读《非暴力沟通》中文版后的感受。我真的很需要倾诉，我相信你一定能理解我的心情。
用了5天时间仔细品读了你的书，我尝试理解文字背后的意义，体会案例当事人的感受并且回想了我与他人还有自己的沟通方式。我逐渐明白了为什么人会有那么多不同的复杂感受，如迷茫、冲突、失落和自责等。一直以来，这些情绪使我困惑不已，我想不起去享受日光照耀的温暖，感受清风吹拂的凉意和皎洁月光的柔和。我不知道要怎么才能开心起来，我忘记了微笑。我害怕跟人沟通，我害怕受伤……过去我认为可能要用一辈子才能弄清楚我是谁，我想要什么。因为有句话是这样说的“人可能一辈子都不清楚自己。”很幸运地，书里写道“抽象的表达阻碍了自我认识和沟通交流。”这一观点提醒了我，了解自己从现在就可以开始。非暴力沟通指引我找到了理解自己过去所作和原谅自己不完美的方法。
为了感知幸福，我开始尽可能地倾听心里的声音并了解心底的需要。我试着心平气和地和自己对话，我明白了自己为什么如此困惑并且和别人在一起的时候总是很累。长期以来，我忽视自己的需要，极力扮演善解人意的好友、懂事乖巧的好孩子和任劳任怨的同事，我想那样大家就能开心快乐喜欢我。我因此而不表达自己的想法,做每件父母要求做的事，不拒绝任何不在我责任范围内的工作任务。我极力满足身边人的需要。我不得不那样做，不然大家就会对我失望，那曾是我最不想看到的。不过我真的很累，我很不开心。随着时间推移，我迷失了自己的声音，我感受不到真正的快乐。更糟的是我变得有点冷漠。最坏的是我不懂如何去信任一个人。信任他人让我觉得很没安全感。你知道的，隐藏真性情和缺乏纯粹被关爱的日子很不好受。我要对自己坦诚，我心底的声音回应我说这不是我想要的生活，我也不想成为这样的人。我接着问，“那你想过什么样的生活？想成为怎样的人？”不是很明确，但至少我不想像以前那样怯懦。我会敢于直面内心的感受并适时表达自己。我会试着控制我的脾气，学会全身心倾听他人。我会尽可能定下具体的目标，制定详细的计划并行动起来，就像每天锻炼减肥或是省下旅游资金。
生活并不是真的像我以前想象的那样难过，信任他人也并没有想象中可怕。我不想因为自己的坏脾气而错过生命中美好的时刻。我想经历更多有意思的事情。我想认识更多不同的人和他们一起分享快乐。我不想一直困惑迷茫下去，到最后后悔不敢做自己想做的事情。谢谢你马歇尔博士，谢谢你给我们指引了一种理解自己和感受幸福的平和的方法。非常感谢你的倾听，祝你每天幸福快乐！
此致，敬礼!
By 繁华_易醉
