The hardest part is finding someone who truly listens

After finishing Liu Zhenyun’s One Sentence Is Worth Ten Thousand, what struck me most was not “how important words are,” but this: we speak all our lives, yet may never truly be understood.

Often what exhausts us is not silence, but words cast into empty space. That is why I began to take the “inner world” more seriously — when the inside is rich enough, even without a kindred spirit, emptiness need not drag you along.

Why we cannot live without speaking: how it builds society

A person has a mouth. A mouth must open and speak; speech needs a listener; the listener gives some response; after the response, the speaker has more to say… In that back-and-forth, connection is made; the circle widens; society takes shape.

Why days feel so hard: simple and complex

The people in the book live in last-century rural China. Ordinary folk simply live around the day itself — simple in one sense, hard in another, because every household has its tangle of chores.

As the saying goes: life is a snarl of thread; you never find the little knot.

Then the problem appears: there are plenty of people — but whom can you speak to? If the speaker can say it and the listener can grasp it, that would be enough. In fact: the speaker speaks, the listener does not understand. Either drift through a lifetime — or search without rest for someone who can hear you.

Why speaking grows more tiring: when “talk” is the only outlet

Speaking is our right; choosing whom to speak to is free. But if people can only get through life by hunting for “someone who can talk with them” — how monotonous, how exhausting must that be? Dig deeper: how lonely and compressed must the inner world become?

Back to oneself: when there is no kindred spirit, how to stay rich inside

For a stretch I lived and studied alone, barely speaking to anyone all day, yet felt full and inwardly glad. Looking back, that state had a reason — my inner life, my spiritual layer, was rich.

I know: having a mouth does not mean you must keep it open. Without an inner world, what comes out is empty talk. As Liu Zhenyun wrote in Cell Phone: of the ten sentences people speak in a day, nine are nonsense.

I also refuse to make “finding a kindred spirit” my only hope forward — I can still enrich myself in many other ways, not only in ideas and knowledge, but more importantly in spirit. Then, even alone, I need not feel desolate. Lonely, perhaps — but with loneliness as company, not helpless.

One line to close: Someone who can truly hear you is rare. An inner world can be built by yourself.

By Miaoqiu · Written Nov 2016