Red Cross Secretary-General Hau Lung-pin (郝龍斌) called me a few days ago to say that, "The bank says it has received the money for that anonymous donation of US$750,000 that we received at the last meeting." I went blank for a second before my mind was filled with gratitude.
I wondered what kind of angel the donor was, and what they were thinking while sealing this gift of love. I thought of a thousand possibilities, but they all led to the same conclusion: The world is lovely.
The world has many lovable aspects because there are many angels who spread their love. There are "angels of love" such as the Pope, Mother Teresa and others who dedicate their lives to the less fortunate, or donate their life's savings in times of disaster.
And there are also the anonymous angels.
The love in this world will never dry up, even though many people sometimes neglect its existence, in particular, when people forget to give love. When we forget to give love, we also lose the ability to feel the love of others.
In particular, many people are attracted by their pursuit of fame, wealth and success, and the fundamental value of this is the attempt to love oneself. But I am increasingly beginning to question whether it is really possible to live on simply relying on the love of oneself.
One of the first questions that arises when we want to love ourselves more deeply is the philosophical question: What is the self? Spiritual questions such as: What is so lovable about me? may also enter into one's head. Added together, these questions may shake one's expectations on the meaning of one's own life.
Once lost, we will be distracted by materialism. One example is the wasteful wrangling of our politicians; another is the media's crazy search for scandals and still another is the rapidly increasing suicide and crime rates. The fact that many people have lost the ability to love and the ability to find what really matters in life has led to the rise in wasteful and strange phenomena.
The Lebanese writer Kahlil Gibran has said that, "If no one loves you and you love no one, you are but a speck of dust in the wind." This beautiful sentence points out the fact that the motivation to live often does not originate in love for oneself, but in love for another -- and in being loved. Lose this love, and we will all be but specks of dust in the wind.
The greatest significance of this anonymous monetary donation is not the sum donated, but in the fact that it is an expression of love. And although it is head and shoulders above all other donations to the Red Cross, all donations are of equivalent value. These noble angels have sparked hope and opened up new possibilities -- the hope of love and the potential to be loved by the world.
An anonymous letter has brought a smile to the faces of the suffering and the hope of love by all others.
C.V. Chen is president of the Red Cross Society of the ROC.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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