NOT PUBLISHED

C. Jennings Breakey
The Western Front
Editorial

Valentine’s Day expresses a wonderful gift to humankind — love. But Feb. 14, a day of kisses, candles and romance, celebrates a love skewed by Hollywood and the media. People no longer know love’s true meaning.

Everyone longs for love in some way, shape or form. The problem is, however, that most people rely on television, magazines and music as their guide to find it.

Media portrays a formula of finding love to its victims — Be sexy, find a warm body and fall in love.

People start their love quest by strutting their stuff, wearing tight clothing or sporting Hollister, Abercrombie or some other high-end brand name. This love is like hunting or fishing with your body, waiting for someone to bite.

Strong emotions and feelings kick in once somebody nabs the bait, creating what the media describes as love.

If a problem occurs during this process, then the media’s love conveys to people to repeat the steps.

Media’s portrayal of love usually begins as a physical attraction, which stimulates emotions soon thereafter. In other words, people fall in love without knowing the other person — their hopes, dreams, religion, likes and dislikes.

This is selfish, immature infatuation, not love. It screams, ‘How will this relationship fulfill me?’

In a world where love is used to describe pizza, football and vehicles, there’s no wonder why people haven’t found true love.

America’s media reveals love in sappy movies, where love is nothing more than flirting and sex. The Greeks, however, discovered true love by coining three levels of love — eros, phileo and agape.

Eros is a physical love, and is where English derives the word erotic. This level of love is sensual and conditional.

The media portrays love as eros alone, accounting for the abundance of relationship baggage and heartache in this day and age.

Eros is an important part of love, but without the other Greek levels of love, eros leads to disaster because people can’t please their significant other at all times.

Phileo is friendship love that can talk about nothing for hours — like best friends who share mutual interests. Phileo loves a person for his or her character, not simply for what one gets out of the relationship.

The third love is agape, which is unconditional love. Agape loves when someone doesn’t deserve to be loved. It gives without expecting anything in return and forgives the unforgivable.

The Bible uses agape love to describe Christ’s love when He died on the cross for the sins of the world. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, a book in the Bible, God’s inspired word says love is patient, kind, not jealous, not boastful, not arrogant, doesn’t act unbecomingly, does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered and does not rejoice in unrighteousness.

1 Corinthians then states that love rejoices with truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things — love never fails.

True love is the three Greek levels of love meshed as one. Together, these loves unravel the media’s deceitful portrayal of love, crush selfishness and can revolutionize the way people go about finding true love.

Unlike the media’s version of love, where one starts by becoming as sexy as possible, true love becomes generous, caring, other-oriented and forgiving — becoming the person instead of looking for the person.

Relationships always hit bumps in the road regardless if it’s anchored by the media’s love or true love. However, there’s a big difference between the two loves when relationships go through trials.

When the media’s version of love goes sour, then both people blame each other for the relationships’ mishaps. When true love comes across rough times, then both lovers check themselves to find and work through the problem.

Through it all, love is a choice. Most people choose to satisfy themselves at all times and ditch their significant other at some point in the relationship, accounting for America’s astronomical divorce rates.

The average couple marrying in recent years has a lifetime probability of divorce or separation close to 50 percent, according to the June 2004 “The State of Our Unions, 2004: The Social Health of Marriage in America” The National Marriage Project.

The media’s love gave birth to a generation of people afraid of commitment and marriage — people who are satisfied with one-night stands and shallow relationships.

If people continue swallowing what the media slams down their throats, then soon anniversaries will be a thing of the past.

A real man or woman isn’t defined by how many significant others he or she has had. Instead, real men and women are those who stay true to each other, leaving no space for the common copout phrases heard so often today: It just didn’t work out. He wasn’t the one. She didn’t love me like this other girl does.

Valentines Day is the day to express love to significant others, the media says. But true love expresses love for a lifetime — 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year.