The Universal language of life

THOM BOND is a thought leader, peace educator, author, and mediation consultant who is best known for The Compassion Course. He’s the founder and Director of Education for the New York Center for Nonviolent Communication. He is interviewed by ELIZABETH DENLEY about his journey, his mentor, Marshall Rosenberg, and what drives our behavior and responses to life.

- ELIZABETH DENLEY

Q: Welcome, Thom.

Thank you, it's great to be here.

Q: I've heard so much about your Compassion Course, and am particularly interested in how you've taken Nonviolent Communication to the next level with compassion and your idea of "engineering peace," beyond the nonviolent aspect to something that goes toward a very positive solution.

When I wrote the course, my father challenged me not to use the words “Nonviolent Communication,” and I realized that Marshall Rosenberg also did not like the moniker of Nonviolent Communication, because it says what it isn’t, not what it is.

More than that, Nonviolent Communication now has the reputation of being a language model. You can learn to say certain words and, abracadabra, you will get along with everybody and resolve all your conflicts. In some ways that is true, but there has to be something behind those words. You can’t just say the words. I have seen folks who were so focused on trying to get the words right that they simply took their habitual patterns and applied them to this.

I wanted to take a completely different approach: not a language model, but an awareness of what is going on within us and around us. That was the idea behind The Compassion Book. People could learn to communicate from the perspective of awareness, and it was a big deal to help people over the line.

It was heartbreaking when people would say, "Well, I used NVC on my husband, I used all the right words, and it didn't do anything." So I asked, "How can we figure out a way to get right to the beautiful foundation of what Marshall discovered?"