COLORING THE WORLD WITH LOVE (English version)

Love is one of the most crucial things in the world. There is an old saying, “Love makes the world go round”, which explains how important love is. Sadly, there are many people suffering from love crises, and their love keeps fading as time goes by. Their love is disabled from burning eternally. Why? Because those people don’t understand that the key to having an everburning love is to share their love with others instead of always receiving love.

These are a few tips to what we can do in order to share our love with other people:

1. Give tokens of love to the person we love.
   If we buy a gift for someone, the value of the gift is not merely about how expensive the gift is. A gift will have more values when given with a sincere heart and a desire to see a smile of joy on the face of the person we love.
   
2. Encourage others with positive words.
   If we see a person we know is successful in achieving something, never hesitate to give a sincere praise and congratulate him/her for the achievement. So as if we see others in agony, learn to give encouraging and supportive words. Whenever possible, we could try to give him/her a suggestion, or even a solution to solve the problem.
   
3. Give a hand when needed.
   Be initiative in offering helps to others in their works. As long as we have finished everything that becomes our priorities in works, we could offer them our hands to help them finishing their works. Some people will find it helpful to have someone giving them hands to efficiently finish their tasks, even though they never ask for it.
   
4. Spend some time with the person we love.
   For some people, spending time with them may be very crucial. Though it only means spending 1 hour, or even 15 minutes, whenever we give full attention during the time spent to that person, then it will mean high quality time for him/her. During the time being, concentrate yourselves fully to interact with the person we love, and release yourselves from thinking about anything else. Togetherness is an important thing here.
   
5. Give physical touch whenever needed.
   Though it only means shaking hands to congratulate someone who has been successful in his/her tasks, when done sincerely, physical touch may become precious to him/her. When facing someone that we love, e.g. our spouses, children, or parents, physical touch may have broader expression, such as kisses, strokes in hair, hugging, gentle patting at the back, etc.

Basically, the five things mentioned above can be done only if we don’t keep seeking profit of our own. We have to learn to care for others and see what are their needs, especially if they are the persons we love most in life. If we keep acting selfishly, then we will never be able to give sincere love to others, and the love that we receive will likely be insincere either. Let’s begin to color the world with love!

(As posted in http://www.jrpindonesia.com in Feb 2005, inspired by The Five Languages of Love by Dr. Gary Chapman)