Dear XXX,
Hope you are happy in front of my letter.
Forgive me for writing you in English, for I have not write in Chinese for a long time, and I also want to practice this language. You must also forgive my poor English, I will make progress!
Now let’s talk about the problem you told me this noon. Frankly speaking, I usually do like you. I usually make up my mind and later forget it totally. I decided to recite Band 4 words but I do not finish it until now! Believe it or not, it is really terrible. I cannot remember how many times have I made my decision and eaten my words. I cannot count!
Why? We are all ordinary people. That is to say, most of the people under the sun are ordinary people. I seldom see someone have so strong will that can hold on all the time. If he could, he might become a great man in the future. If more and more people had strong will, there would be more geniuses. However, as we can see, most people cannot. I do not mean to persuade you, I am definitely telling you a truth! It is not your weakness, but the human beings’ weakness.
But we must come up with some measures to deal with it. First, control your ambition before you decide something. Do not be so ambitious that you cannot successfully do it in the end. For instance, I sometimes want to make full use of my time and leave no time among the tasks. So you can easily imagine what will happen. Distractions cannot be avoided, so our plan does not work very well. When we come back and go on our tasks, we are usually upset and disappointed for our behavior. So there comes my second piece of advice, do as much as possible and never care about how much you lost because of distractions or something else. It is exactly what I lack! I used to promise to somebody that I will buy you something if I cannot do something by a particular future time. It does work! It is called “promise to the public” as my third piece of advice I want to share with you. Do you still remember the book “Never run exposed myself” (JUE BU LUO BEN)? It is the main idea of this book. If you promise in the public, you will be afraid of losing face when you cannot do it. So to avoid this occasion happened, you are bond to try your best.
The advice above is what I can come up with. Some will suit you. As for the feast you promised, I must be ready to do have with you as soon as I come back to China. At least, I want to tell you, never give up, have confidence about our future, and lead a happy life with less bothers. We bless for you at such a long distance best wishes to you.
Miss you.
Yours, Tom
add:My friend was confused that she cannot hold on to do something,so I reply her to persuade her to be happy.
She is a lucky girl to have a friend like you.
ReplyDeleteTom, your letter to your friend is interesting! I like what you said about making a promise to the public. I gather that what you mean is that if you make a decision to do something, you should tell it to someone, so that it puts pressure on you to perform the action. Well, I will try it, as it sounds so logical! Like you said, we Chinese like to 'save face'.
ReplyDelete