Love as a Commodity

  If anything has the remote possibility of turning a profit, there is a company somewhere that is going to market it. Every Christmas countless businesses have society paying up for peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Come February, every florist, jeweler, and chocolatier is working to convince people that their products will assure the buyer's loved ones of the validity of their affections.
  Saturday, as I walked through the store where America shops, I was struck by how commercial love becomes on Valentine's day. If you love someone, the obvious way to show them that is not to spend time with them and to listen to them and to serve them. It is to spend an inordinate amount of money buying them stuff. In America we live in this commercialized delusion that money is love; that love can be bought.
  Romantic love is wonderful, and it is not a bad thing that a holiday exists devoted to its celebration. Its commercialization makes it cheap though. Good things cannot be bought. Contentment and happiness come from choices people make as individuals, not from stuff people buy. Love is a gift to be given, not a thing to be purchased and sold. And while some show their love through gifts, the evidence of love ultimately shown through sacrifice and selflessness and kindness. Stuff is insufficient to express the depths of love. When love becomes a commodity, it is not really love anymore: it becomes a monster.