God, some days are hard. Anyway, here's a nice belated Valentine's Day post (yeah yeah.. a recycled essay for english class):

Love
By: Leah Schmidt

Love: the latest fad. It’s ‘hip’ to be glued at the hip. People are pairing up two by two like Noah’s loading up the arc again, and nobody wants to brave this storm we call ‘life’ alone.
A combination of media influence and teenage hormones has made romance all the rage. It’s all over T.V. and music. Everybody who’s anybody has a partner, is looking for a partner, or just broke up with one. The world of passion is more competitive than any jungle ecosystem. It’s survival of the fittest folks. If you’re not in a relationship, there’s got to be a reason why. It’s hardly the other way around. Love is the alternative to being alone, and being alone has just gone out of fashion.
The problem with this trend is that love isn’t so easy to come by. You cannot force yourself to love, just as you cannot force others to love you. These people seem to have the actions involved in loving down pat, but in absence of the feeling of love, it is a hollow investment. This type of relationship consumes time, energy, and emotion, rarely benefiting either party in the long run. When people enter into these sorts of connections, they quickly become obsessed with the other person. In the insecurity of a counterfeit affection, partners become determined to make things work. They grow to be absorbed with one another, giving up who they had once been and the past lives they had once led. Suddenly old hobbies, friends, even school or work become less important and step back into their new place in the shadow of this latest regal darling.
These days, people have trouble telling the difference between love and lust. Skyrocketing divorce rates are a clear indicator that they are hitching up for the wrong reasons. What’s worse, there are those who have made love into a profitable commodity. Valentine’s Day is the most blatant and disheartening example of this exploitation of human emotion. Ironically, this day is the very emblem of the superficiality that love, true love, transcends. Commercialism tells society that we have got to love somebody and, in expression of this love, that we must empty our bank accounts to prove it. What cheapening of an alleged ‘unconditional’ bond! Further, cosmetics companies, hairstylists, the fashion industry and the business of weight loss rake in disgustingly massive revenues from consumers. All of this rides on the empty promise that, if we look a certain way, somebody somewhere might venture to love us. The cruel irony is that real love is neither based on possessions nor appearance at all. These false notions, if you are naïve enough to believe in them, only guarantee to lighten your wallet, give you a pat on the back, and send you on your way down a long, winding road of discontentment and romantic failure.
Another giveaway of the inaccuracy of naming this bond ‘love’ is strict adherence to social expectations. Before considering a person as a partner, it is immediately called into question whether or not it would be publicly acceptable to be seen with them. In other words, would it be ‘cool’ to be with this person; are we socially ‘compatible’? True love is not concerned with social standing, but includes all walks of life in its considerations for compatibility. If a person is worried more about the public’s opinion than their own, they are not looking for someone to love. They are looking for a decoration. By cutting out of the running all but one social group, they are greatly limiting their own romantic potential.
Love has become vogue. Maybe it always has been. Who wouldn’t want to share such profound emotion with another person? There are those, and many of them, who search their entire lives for love. I do not argue the validity of this cause. What I do find objectionable, or even regrettable, is the dulling of this magnificent phenomenon by casual and hasty manipulation of its name. This depreciation, in my opinion, has caused real love to become a scarcer and scarcer find. If true love is to remain more than a myth, society as a whole must learn to appreciate and cherish its supreme value.

Ok, so it gets corny at the end. I'm beginning to hope that my cynical views of the world are dead wrong..