鼓励他人是一种美德

Encouraging Others Is a Virtue

> By Li Xiaolai · 2007-05-11 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113111015/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/79.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

I personally have a principle that I try my best to stick to: "always encourage the people around you, even if somewhat blindly." Encouraging the people around you is a virtue that most people don't consider important. My doing this has to do with my own experience. There are always some people (possibly a great many) who are often regarded as oddballs in life. I don't know whether it was good luck or bad luck, but in any case, from childhood the sentence I most often heard teachers and classmates repeat to me was, "How come you're the only one like this?"

So, in a sense, I grew up very lonely. Very early on I found that if some fresh idea popped into my head, I'd better not say it out loud. Because once I said it, it was bound to meet a cruel attack of cold water from every direction, and repeated attacks at that. I always feel that as a child I really was extremely clever, and that the most likely reason I'm now of mediocre intelligence is that I was frozen stupid by the long, repeated, seemingly never-ending cold showers.

For quite a long period, I suffered because I was different from most people. [Translator's note: the original writes 相当常一段时间, a slip for 相当长一段时间, "quite a long period"; translated by the intended sense] When a teacher, with an expression of "frustration that iron won't become steel," or a classmate, with an expression of "I've long been steel and you're still iron," said, "How come you're the only one who's different?", I felt myself suddenly shrink by a whole section, and wished I could vanish at once from everyone's sight.

What made me feel even more inferior was that I wasn't really all that different from other people. If I'd been very handsome, I probably would have found it hard to feel inferior; if I'd been very tall and strong, probably few people would have dared to talk like that to my face. The more important problem was that from childhood I was exceptionally sensitive to my own shortcomings, which meant I knew my shortcomings almost perfectly clearly, so it was hard for me to prop up my self-confidence with illusions either.

So I suffered over this for a long time. Then one day I finally discovered that most people like pouring cold water.

They were originally just like me—they too were "different from most people." (Studying probability is a good thing, because it makes you understand an inevitable conclusion: most people are necessarily different from the other majority.) Perhaps they too, like me, struggled to try to be the same as other people. As a result, of course, we all failed without exception. But I was rather honest (or not bright enough—that works too), and when I failed I admitted failure. Whereas quite a number of people, having failed, pretended to have succeeded, even to the point of pretending until they themselves believed it.

So when someone—you, for example—dares, of all things, to be different from them, their most immediate thought is "How is this possible?" "What gives you the right to be different from us?" They will even go so far as to spend time and energy searching for reasons why "you can't possibly be different from us," and then try to prove it—no matter how far-fetched those reasons are. Although they don't necessarily want you to be the same as them, they definitely don't like you being different from them—they're thinking: "Who do you think you are?"

They are bound to pour cold water on you. You can't imagine how strong the desire to pour cold water is. That strength draws on too many forces: suspicion, envy, fear, anger. And in the process of showing itself it is wrapped in another skin: concern, care, friendship, help.

So I made a decision: from then on I would encourage everyone around me, even if he wasn't my friend. Another reason supporting my doing this also came from my observation. I found that people who dare to do earth-shaking things are not only a minority, but the tiniest minority of the tiny minority. So encouraging someone carries no real risk. [Translator's note: the original writes 做得 for 做的 and 事清 for 事情 ("thing"); translated by the intended sense]

A friend told me he was going to open a little shop; I said, great, what can I do to help you? This friend was taken aback for a moment and said, "Everyone else says it won't work……"

Another friend told me he had fallen in love with a married woman five years older than him; I said, great, even fifteen years older wouldn't matter, it's nobody else's business, and besides, if her marriage is already unhappy, not getting divorced is what's actually immoral. This friend was taken aback for a moment and said, "Damn, you're the first person who hasn't objected."

A friend told me she wanted to learn Photoshop; I said, great, being able to make things with your own hands will surely put you in a good mood. She was taken aback for a moment and said, "Shit, everyone else laughs at me."

Perhaps I've just been unlucky? I've never met a single person who asked me, "Do you think I should just do away with XXX?" or "Do you think it'd be OK for me to rob a bank?" And the key thing is that over more than 10 years, every time I've given a friend a positive response, using three simple words, "That's great!" (很好啊), to show encouragement, I have, surprisingly, seen almost exactly the same expression, first of surprise and then of gratitude.

I seem to have said to someone before that when you keep encouraging everyone, you eventually find yourself entering a state others can't imagine: you have become a person who doesn't need encouragement from others.

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.