My Definition of Love is: It Has Lost It’s True Meaning

What is love? To answer that question one must look at the different forms of love that exist in this world. The first form of love that exists is a love of family members. This love exists because we share the closest possible connection to these people. We feel like they are the people we can truly connect with and therefore we feel like we belong. This feeling of belonging and reciprocal love stimulates the feeling inside us all that we can only describe as love.
The second form of love in this world is the love for material possessions. Once can decide that they love Twinkies, they love their iPod, or they love their car. This love comes from the materials being able to provide feelings of comfort, satisfaction, or pride. A Twinkie and other forms of food give us the content feeling many strive for, chocolate being on of the best providers as it stimulates the release of endorphins in the brain. IPods and Xboxes give us feelings of satisfaction as music can very well control the emotions we feel at a certain moment and video games provide the competition and chance to win that has always driven human behavior. A car gives a sense of freedom that many teens strive for and expensive cars give people the feeling of being better than somebody else. This need to be better or the best is almost the center of human behavior and anything that can provide it would easily provoke somebody to describe the feeling as love.
The final form of love comes from the contentment, security, and overall happiness that come from someone who is not of their family. Many times this love comes from a mutual attraction between two people of opposite gender and no family relation. This is not set in stone though as both of those conditions are easily broken and considered taboo by many societies and religions today. Never the less, those feelings are still present and cause many of us to change long-standing habits and perform unnecessary, over exaggerated, and illogical actions. This form of love is the rarest and most powerful which is why it has become the foundation of many novels and movies today.
Looking at these forms of love I find myself defining love as an over-used and exaggerated expression in today’s society. Today many people express their love by taking the ultimate step of commitment to each other, marriage. This is defined by many to be a holy and unbreakable bond between two people who have found love within one another. Today 50% of all marriages lead to divorce and remarriage to someone else that they both “love”. Today many teenagers say they “love” each other and will stay with each other no matter what. This leads to many having unprotected sex and when the couple find out they are going to be parents they either break up or the guy leaves the girl he “loves” as he does not want this responsibility. So is it really love that the divorced adults and the pregnant couple feel, or is it just something to say?
“It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” This notable quote about love is one that I passionately disagree with. The speaker believed that the pain of losing love is outweighed by the happiness and other feelings felt while in love. I believe that love can ultimately lead to the greatest pain and suffering of one’s life and that the feelings experienced while in love will be tarnished by the realization that you loved one does not, or did not, love you back. The third most popular religion in the US (Buddhism) teaches that love in this form leads to great pain and suffering. To achieve Enlightenment one must forgo this form of love so as to shed all sorrows and suffering from one’s life. This is the philosophy that makes the most sense to me.
I do believe that love exists in today’s society, but it has become abused, over-used, and over-rated.