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Two weeks ago, at the funeral rites of the mother of my friend, I quietly watched people interact, something I love to do for no particular reason. I noted that instead of mourning death, the family and friends were there to celebrate life. Love was what I sensed, and the recognition that everything is transient. The mother lived her life in full and with dignity; passing was simply part of the natural process. Love remains, dignity entire.

Love makes the world go round, it is said. It comes in many shapes and forms. And so do the objects of love. Some people try to make love quantifiable. A colleague of mine once set out a list of character traits and qualities, complete with numerical value attached to each, to select a woman he could fall in love with. The last I heard, he is still single and in search of love.

Even those we consider as having the most malicious minds do love. Hitler loved classical music, especially Schubert, Beethoven and Wagner. He loved paintings and architecture. As a vegetarian who deplored poachers, he was merciless to political opponents. Hitler adored his German shepherd Blondi, so much so that it gave rise to the term "Blondi syndrome", which describes people who love animals, but hate humans. If one looks at the photographs of Hitler and Blondi together, one will see the kind of loving kindness and compassion that makes you wonder how the man in the photos could be the same man who committed such a monstrous act of genocide.

Hermann Goering, Hitler's right-hand man and head of the Luftwaffe, adored children and animals. He was also an avid art connoisseur, and his collection remains one of the finest in Europe. Heinrich Himmler was the head of the SS who, together with Goering, set up the concentration camps that claimed the lives of millions of Jews. But in the letters he wrote to his mistress, Hedwig Potthash, Himmler revealed the most gentle, thoughtful and caring side of a man. It was the same man who sometimes stood so close to his victims that on occasion the impact of the bullets would cause human tissue to spatter on his face, which he would calmly wipe away without expression or emotion.

Pol Pot would not think twice about killing one of his comrades or countrymen, but no one could touch his daughter. Saddam Hussein won the heart of an American medical adviser - US Army Nurse Robert Ellis, who was charged with caring for this brutal man while in captivity so he would survive for interrogation. To Ellis, Saddam Hussein had shown plenty of his humane side, and this caused Ellis to suffer from his own internal conflicts.

The "Queen of Mean", New York billionaire Leona Helmsley, upon her passing, gave US$12 million to her Maltese dog Trouble, and not a single penny to two of her grandchildren. The father of an American friend of mine would donate the majority of his income to his church and charities to help alleviate mankind's suffering, while his children would often find the refrigerator at home empty.

If love is hard to define, dignity is more elusive. If the former makes the world go around, dignity makes it worthy.

My father was a government officer who called himself a "civil servant". At work, he was a square peg in a round hole by remaining an honest man while people around him regarded graft and kickbacks as their entitlement. He was one of the most educated and professional officers, but he always came second in exams and consideration for promotion. Soon, the way he was addressed went from "Sir" to "Dude" by people who once were his underlings. My mother would get so furious at the injustice and shabby treatment meted out to my father, that she quit the government altogether.

But my father remained unperturbed. He never got mad at his peers, never complained, never showed bitterness, never felt inferior. Every day he went to work a happy and honourable man because he knew he was doing his job and honouring his responsibilities. He came home from work a happy and loving father, even though I am sure there were times when we did not behave in the manner that deserved his love.

Through the ebbs and flows of his life and career, my father knew there was something in him that nobody could take away, not even the illness that ravaged his body: his dignity. As Philip Massinger said, dignity is not gained by place, and never lost when honours are withdrawn.

So I learned from my father that as hard as they are to define, both love and dignity come from the inside, and neither needs external affirmation and reciprocity, even though for many people, and at many moments in our lives, that may seem so. Love comes from the heart, dignity from the gut, the backbone, the core of one's existence. Looking for them elsewhere, outside of oneself, will be looking in all the wrong places.

Bob Dylan sang that he had gone everywhere looking for dignity and ended up wondering what it would take to find it. Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most intuitive, complex and fascinating psychology theorists, said he had a glimpse of dignity during an encounter with a Native American, a Pueblo Indian. The man told Jung that white people were "mad" because they thought with their head. For him, dignity and wisdom came from the heart and being a part of the design of the deity, the universe.

After all that has been said and done about love and dignity, at the end of a hard day, when you need no one to judge you, and you need not judge anyone else, when all you need may be just a simple hug, or just serenity, you close the door and know you are home. And maybe then, when you are not looking for love or dignity, when you do not think about either, you will know what they mean.