Monday, September 20, 2010

Love as a resource: Is it depleting?

Can we qualify love?

Can we put value to love?

In ways that our imagination works, love can be associated with anything. But as far as reality is concerned, we can’t perform valuation and qualify the limits of love. Putting limits to what love can do, makes us beings not capable of feeling.In such cases, I would dare to explain love on something that I am familiar with; Love as a resource.

Love is an infinite resource. It is abundant and unlimited. We live in a world of order that was formed out of love and mercy of God. Everything around us is the creation of love. Imagining a world without love is simply living in chaos.

In a more interesting note, its abundance is the reason why we don’t seem to get tired of loving and caring for others. It is a resource that is non-rival and non-exclusive. Everyone can have access to it. It is like a seed planted in each one of us that we nurture and share its fruits to others. It is like a road that everyone shares. It is like a park where everyone can enjoy and relax. Love is a universal resource that makes up the very foundation of human interaction.

Can we trade love? Yes we can trade love in exchange for love. One important point of trading is for its appropriate reciprocity of satisfaction. Just like trading a goat for a sack of rice, there should be an equivalent satisfaction. But this satisfaction isn’t always mundane and romance. The satisfaction we get from shedding our love to others is the feeling of being loved in return. At times, we can trade love without expecting in return. You can choose to have an altruistic take on love. The good thing is, even if you don’t get love as an exchange, your love don’t diminish, like a pot of gold that never runs out of gold coins. Love as a resource quickly replenishes.

The important question now is; why are there people that fall out of love? Does this mean that there is a shortage of love?

This scenario is actually a by-product of the complicated social structure that we are in. Like in a market, we say there is a Perfect Competition just like saying that there is a perfect relationship. Ideally, I want to think of love and relationship like this. But we can never be sure, since imperfections around us makes it hard to achieve an ideal relationship just like imperfections on a market.

The nearest explanation I can get is the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. It is not really love that depletes. What depletes is the utility or satisfaction from the relationship you have. May be they got fed up on having the same routines every day. May be they lack the toil and trouble on making their relationship last longer. We have to consider, one good thing about LDMU is that you can prolong your utility from being diminished (Will come up of a new post particularly on this one). Meaning you can slow down the rate that your satisfaction declines.

But in the end, love is a very mysterious resource. It may be infinite and abundant like water, but the irony of it is that, finding its true meaning is a very rare resource just like diamond.

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