Love Island…?

The success of Love Island was resounding, breaking viewer records. I couldn’t help noticing the stark and dark contrast between the success of the show and the quick failure of the relationships established during the show. I could not help asking myself some questions about love.

Can love be real love if it is just a show or just on show?

Is love a simple attraction to, or desire for, the body of the ‘beloved’ or the ‘lover’?

Can love be real love if it becomes just a money spinner celebrated by glamour, lavish receptions or turned into an empty, short-lived, exciting show?

In Malta, our little island, life is good, as they say.

But is it that good?

Yes, we have better comforts but worse addictions.

Yes, we have better social services  but more social cases.

Yes, we have better education, but more failures on all levels.

Yes, we have better roads but more bottlenecks, crashes and hit-and-run cases.

Yes, we have better houses  but more urban jungles.

Yes, we have better opportunities but more suicides.

Photo: Facebook/Love Island Malta

Yes, we have more lavish wedding celebrations but more broken marriages.

Yes, we have more retail outlets, restaurants and entertainment venues but more loneliness.

Yes, we have more luxuries but less children.

Yes, we have more holidaying at home and abroad but less peaceful homes, hearts and minds.

Where is love in Malta? Is it on TV shows, in parties, fiestas, luxuries and comforts?

No, love in our dear island does exist but elsewhere.  It is in the hearts of those giving themselves totally and unconditionally to their families and children, to serving the sick, poor and lonely with hidden but obstinate dedication, to walking with drug addicts on the long way to recovery, to nursing the sick and elderly hidden away in hospitals, institutions and lonely homes.

Love is in the dedicated and consecrated persons who give themselves silently, in an unsung, generous, self-giving way to those they love and serve.

What is keeping our beloved ‘Love Island’ afloat is no TV show. It is the rock-solid and hidden commitment willing to bear and share the pain of a broken loved one and not just the soft bed or the fake show.

Real love is never an easy, pleasurable, entertaining show. It is a show of force and determination to give oneself to the weak and vulnerable instead of simply and cruelly exploiting them.

Do we have what it takes to stop the show and start making ours a real rather than a fake Love Island?

Fr Paul Chetcuti SJ – Birkirkara