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.
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Investing in Love
We are always in constant search for someone to love and hoping that if we find it, our affection gets reciprocated. Most often than not, we give almost everything from our time to our rationality when we fell in love. We get blinded by the euphoric feeling of love that made us vulnerable. At times, when our feelings are not commensurately reciprocated, we tend to feel the lack of self worth and a lot of self pity. And when things get from bad to worse and reach the tipping point, we snap. We then drown ourselves to too much crying and drinking.
This is a classic example of investing your time and emotion to an overrated concept of loving. You weren’t wise enough to think of the different possibilities of engaging to an investment that may or may not give you the worth of what you have invested such as time and feelings. Some will say, when you love someone, you are willing to give everything without expecting anything in return. I guess these are the people we all call as “saints”. I guess not every one of us will fall to that kind of love. And so, we shall differ ourselves from a martyrdom love to a romantic love.
Let’s try to walk ourselves through the process of love investment rudimentarily. First step before getting to a relationship is to know your worth. This is like knowing how much money you currently have. Second step is, after knowing your value you should know how much of your personal space and time are you willing to give up for your partner. This is like knowing the proportion of your current wealth you are willing to put into investment. Third step is to learn your risk aversion (I’ll probably devote another post on tackling risk aversion). This is the time when you ask yourself whether you are a risk seeker, a risk averse, and a risk neutral. This is where most people commit mistakes. They mischaracterize themselves because they no longer care who they are for the sake of their partner. In investment you have to learn this to know where to put your investment. If you are a risk averse person, you wouldn’t put your money into a stock that is volatile and register extremes in prices. In retrospect, if you are a risk averse person you should not get into relationship without clarity. You wouldn’t get into a relationship where there are too many complications like third party or unrequited past relationships.
Now, it is funny though that in investment the higher the risk on your stock the higher the returns could be (Generally speaking). This is the reason why a lot of people in Finance stumble because they automatically look at the returns and totally forgetting about the risks involved. In simple terms, if you are to go into a relationship, how much are you willing to forego just to be with the man/woman of your dream? Will it be at the expense of your friends? Will it be at the expense of your family? Will it be at the expense of your career? Being realistic, you wouldn’t really gain and retain everything you want, at some point in time you have to give up on it. This is the point in loving that you get or SHOULD rationalize (in my opinion).
What should I propose then as a solution? In investment the common solution to this dilemma is diversification. This is where you try to mitigate the ill effects of your probable bad decisions. (I’ll probably devote another post on this one).
In the end, we all want to be winners in love. But in doing it, we need to still balance out our heart, our mind, our gut feel and our faith with “love”.
This is a classic example of investing your time and emotion to an overrated concept of loving. You weren’t wise enough to think of the different possibilities of engaging to an investment that may or may not give you the worth of what you have invested such as time and feelings. Some will say, when you love someone, you are willing to give everything without expecting anything in return. I guess these are the people we all call as “saints”. I guess not every one of us will fall to that kind of love. And so, we shall differ ourselves from a martyrdom love to a romantic love.
Let’s try to walk ourselves through the process of love investment rudimentarily. First step before getting to a relationship is to know your worth. This is like knowing how much money you currently have. Second step is, after knowing your value you should know how much of your personal space and time are you willing to give up for your partner. This is like knowing the proportion of your current wealth you are willing to put into investment. Third step is to learn your risk aversion (I’ll probably devote another post on tackling risk aversion). This is the time when you ask yourself whether you are a risk seeker, a risk averse, and a risk neutral. This is where most people commit mistakes. They mischaracterize themselves because they no longer care who they are for the sake of their partner. In investment you have to learn this to know where to put your investment. If you are a risk averse person, you wouldn’t put your money into a stock that is volatile and register extremes in prices. In retrospect, if you are a risk averse person you should not get into relationship without clarity. You wouldn’t get into a relationship where there are too many complications like third party or unrequited past relationships.
Now, it is funny though that in investment the higher the risk on your stock the higher the returns could be (Generally speaking). This is the reason why a lot of people in Finance stumble because they automatically look at the returns and totally forgetting about the risks involved. In simple terms, if you are to go into a relationship, how much are you willing to forego just to be with the man/woman of your dream? Will it be at the expense of your friends? Will it be at the expense of your family? Will it be at the expense of your career? Being realistic, you wouldn’t really gain and retain everything you want, at some point in time you have to give up on it. This is the point in loving that you get or SHOULD rationalize (in my opinion).
What should I propose then as a solution? In investment the common solution to this dilemma is diversification. This is where you try to mitigate the ill effects of your probable bad decisions. (I’ll probably devote another post on this one).
In the end, we all want to be winners in love. But in doing it, we need to still balance out our heart, our mind, our gut feel and our faith with “love”.
The game of love: the rebound and the rebounder
We used to say that love is so mysterious and inexplicable. Well, yes it is an enigma! But how do we take on this kind of thing? Like I would always tell to my friends, just play it like a game. Set rules, set parameters, and just enjoy the whole thing. But there is this particular aspect of it that I would say is really controversial. This is a relationship where either of the two just broke up and the other one is so in dire need of someone. I call them the classic case of rebounder and the rebound.
Let us do the basics first, some elementary-love 101. The Rebounder is someone who just broke up with his boy/girlfriend who is seeking comfort from an opposite sex. This is a person who is day in and day out thinks of his/her subject of affection. This person is most likely does not realize that their relationship is falling apart. On the other hand, the rebound is a person who is most of the time single. A person who believes that Mr/Ms right will come to rescue him/her from loneliness. This person is usually someone close to the rebounder. It is most often than not the crying shoulder of the rebounder when things went from bad to worse. And finally, this is the person who keeps a secret altar of the rebounder in his/her room (my exaggerated way of describing a secret crush).
But the question is who plays the victim and the culprit in this scenario? I would say that the victim is the one who is more vulnerable while the culprit is someone who keeps on taking advantage.
The Rebound is always at the losing end of this kind of relationship. This person will most likely end up crying and cursing when things go back to normal for the rebounder. Let us take into account that this person is giving so much time and attention to the rebounder hoping that it will blossom to something romantic. Well, we can’t say that mr/ms. Rebound is a hypocrite for expecting so much. We can’t blame the person especially if the rebounder will call you at the middle of the night, if the rebounder always insist to see you, if the rebounder is keeping you away from your friends and trying to as if own you and your time.
Is there anything wrong in this set up? Is there anything wrong being so nice? Well it is complete bull crap! You can’t be the mother Theresa for the spoiled brat Rebounders who is selfish and insensitive!
What then will be my advice for possible rebounds? Number one rule if you want to get into this kind of bloody hell set-up, then you should be ready for a higher probability of being left behind. But I guess you don’t deserve to be left behind, so better yet set limits to how much will you allow the rebounder to occupy from your personal space. But if you are willing to play this game and play it like a pro, you should know how to mitigate the risk of pain! The absolute rule here is to never fall in love first with the Rebounder. If you fell in love first before the rebounder, then you automatically waved you right to play this damn game.
Let us do the basics first, some elementary-love 101. The Rebounder is someone who just broke up with his boy/girlfriend who is seeking comfort from an opposite sex. This is a person who is day in and day out thinks of his/her subject of affection. This person is most likely does not realize that their relationship is falling apart. On the other hand, the rebound is a person who is most of the time single. A person who believes that Mr/Ms right will come to rescue him/her from loneliness. This person is usually someone close to the rebounder. It is most often than not the crying shoulder of the rebounder when things went from bad to worse. And finally, this is the person who keeps a secret altar of the rebounder in his/her room (my exaggerated way of describing a secret crush).
But the question is who plays the victim and the culprit in this scenario? I would say that the victim is the one who is more vulnerable while the culprit is someone who keeps on taking advantage.
The Rebound is always at the losing end of this kind of relationship. This person will most likely end up crying and cursing when things go back to normal for the rebounder. Let us take into account that this person is giving so much time and attention to the rebounder hoping that it will blossom to something romantic. Well, we can’t say that mr/ms. Rebound is a hypocrite for expecting so much. We can’t blame the person especially if the rebounder will call you at the middle of the night, if the rebounder always insist to see you, if the rebounder is keeping you away from your friends and trying to as if own you and your time.
Is there anything wrong in this set up? Is there anything wrong being so nice? Well it is complete bull crap! You can’t be the mother Theresa for the spoiled brat Rebounders who is selfish and insensitive!
What then will be my advice for possible rebounds? Number one rule if you want to get into this kind of bloody hell set-up, then you should be ready for a higher probability of being left behind. But I guess you don’t deserve to be left behind, so better yet set limits to how much will you allow the rebounder to occupy from your personal space. But if you are willing to play this game and play it like a pro, you should know how to mitigate the risk of pain! The absolute rule here is to never fall in love first with the Rebounder. If you fell in love first before the rebounder, then you automatically waved you right to play this damn game.
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