What does love mean to you? Is it about the content, the price or the value? Very confusing right? What is the difference? You may ask
A story goes,”Some time ago, a man punished his 3-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.
Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”
The man became embarrassed by his overreaction earlier, but his rage resurfaced when he realised the box was empty. He yelled at her; “Don’t you know, when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside?”
The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried;
“Oh, daddy, it’s not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They’re all for you, daddy.”
The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged for her forgiveness.
Only a short time later, an accident took the life of the child. Her father kept the gold box by his bed for many years and, whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.
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Sometimes just like the man, we see love as the price someone paid in terms of money. The man punished the girl for ‘wasting’ the gold wrapping because finances were tight. How much did that date cost? Sometimes we even receive a gift and ask someone how much they paid for it and then we use this to evaluate how much they love us.
At times, we see love as the content. The man got very angry when he saw the box was empty because for him, when giving a gift, it had to have something in it. However, his paradigm was changed when the daughter tearfully told him that she had blown kisses into the box and they were all for him. Which one has the greatest value, a gift in the box or kisses?
I may not know what love means to you, but I would challenge you to shift your paradigm. Love is not so much about the tangible things or the things you can put a price on but rather, it is about the priceless things. It’s about the sacrifice we make for the other person. It’s about the quality time we spend, it’s about the advice we give. It’s about forgiveness when we least deserve it. To read more posts by Mercy, click HERE
