Is there love among Indonesian people?

Recently there are so many disasters in Indonesia. In February again there’s an earthquake jolted the northeast West Sumatra. For the earthquake at least 82 people were killed. All people around the world especially Indonesian citizens always offer aids but they tend only to give material goods and less direct personal involvement. Aids are mostly in the form of food, money and clothes, but there are few volunteers who offer their engagement. Indeed there is nothing wrong with material aids but many people forget the importance of their own concerns and solidarity, which famous psychologist Erich Fromm defines both as emanating from love.

His book entitled ‘The Art of Loving’ describes love as an art that requires effort, knowledge and practice. To view love as an art is to imagine that the capacity for love is a seed that lies within each of us, and that growing that seed is solely our own responsibility. This word isn’t easy to practice in our everyday life. Am I wrong? To practice this teaching requires energy of support and action that some of us lack of.

Most of Indonesian people help each other for their impulsive feeling. They offer their aids only if they find it morally all right. They help because they feel sorry for the victims. They offer the help mostly only one or two times. This has already become like a habit of most people. Once they offer such limited help, they find themselves already satisfied because the urge of feeling of pity has been appeased.

In fact the victims of many calamities like those in Aceh need more long term aids and not only food, clothes, and money that will not last longer. They need more of, like Indonesian proverb says, ‘fishing rod than fishes’. They need a self-help scheme than direct material aids.

I would say again that giving material aids is not wrong but it is not enough. They need you to give a long term than a short term support. Long term support indeed needs many efforts, knowledge and practices. People tend not to think of the importance of a long term support. Why? Can I say that it is because of that people do not understand the meaning of love (to humankind)?

I have a good example of love. I recently watched the Oprah Winfrey show on TV programs. She told the TV viewers that about 400 people gave long term aids to the victims of Katrina disaster. These different people, men and women, far away coming from out of the disaster areas, who actually do not know personally to each other, helped the victims with sparing their energy and concrete actions by building people's houses. They worked hard like groups of ants. They gave physical supports such as their muscles that were needed in building houses, also expertise to construct strong, nice houses. They worked hard and were not paid. This spirit of love and how they did it in team work strikes me.

As far as I am concerned, people in Indonesia rarely do that. Or am I wrong, because there seems to have actually never been existent such kind of community self-help in Indonesia? No, I must be wrong because we do have ‘gotong royong’ in the small villages. But unfortunately there is no such spirit of gotong royong in such a large scale of disaster that befell the people like in Aceh or in Yogyakarta after the earthquakes. Eventually those earthquake victims have to help themselves once the limited aids that do not cover like materials and manpower for building houses. The earthquake victims in Bantul of Yogyakarta, for instance, fortunately were creative enough as they made earthen bricks for building their houses with their own hands. No more helps from anybody but limited involvement of the students.

Back to Oprah Winfrey program, why can they do such as beautiful thing? Why can’t we? I think it’s the power of love that we lack of. They know the meaning of love. I do not say that Indonesian people don’t have love. We do have, but more for our friends and families. The relationships still do not yet spread out larger. They miss the precious value behind that word of love.

Maybe it’s time for us to reflect what we have contributed so far to those victims. How can I love them more as what they actually need?