When 1+1 Doesn’t Equal 2
I’m going to objectify a situation that many people may take personally offensive, so if that bothers you I suggest you close your computer and find yourself a grilled cheese sandwich. If not, then read on and feel free to sling mud in the comments.
Our society dictates that we all form relationships of some sort, with someone at some point in our lives. From the moment we’re born we are tossed into a loving relationship with our parents or a lack of love, but a relationship none-the-less. Even as a child before we understand the value of love we exhibit it flawlessly. After all, we need our caretakers and in return we show this thing classified as love exhibited as loyalty. This is generally the height of the same relationship we can have with a companion such as a dog. The master provides food and shelter while the animal provides companionship. Our childhood mirrors this almost exactly.
As we grow in our comprehension of the society we live in, we also begin to understand that there is a give and a take to relationships. We may have experienced this as a child but didn’t fully understand it. For instance, if I threw a tantrum in an effort to achieve my goals and that didn’t work, then I probably learned that a tantrum was not what I was going to need to give before I could take what I wanted. Mature relationships such as a friendship are built on this same principle of give and take.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have many great friends. Some of those people have moved on but regardless of that, I still consider them to have been influential as the result a positive or negative relationship. We can all relate to this. Now that we’re on the same page, I challenge you to answer this question: What is the value of any one of your relationships? We determine the value, or the threshold of each relationship we’re in on a daily basis without ever thinking about it. If you go out to dinner and decide to pick up the check then you’ve determined that your relationship has a higher value than the dollar amount of that check. If someone calls you in the middle of the night and you answer the phone then you’ve determined that your relationship has a higher value than the value of sleeping an extra hour. If you leave your career to care for a sick friend then you’ve valued your relationship higher than your own success.
If we are able to compare one thing to another and determine whether or not that action is within the threshold of our relationship, then are we able to place a numerical value on that relationship? Stands to reason that we should be able to. So why is it so difficult? I’ve been asking myself this question for years and unfortunately I still haven’t come up with an answer.
Imagine that you could extract the 10 most positive events and 10 most negative events from your best relationship. Then try to apply a numerical value of -5 to +5 to each of those events respective to whether you consider them to be a positive or negative event with +/- 5 being the most influential. The net value, if that relationship is still good, should be positive. In simpler terms: having a positive net value indicates that more good things have happened in your relationship than bad things. So the negative events haven’t broken that particular relationship’s threshold yet.
Working backwards, is it possible to determine the threshold of the value of a relationship before it’s reached? I guess this would fall into the category of predicting the future but just maybe it’s possible. One idea is that you could imagine a series of negative events and attempt to apply those events to your relationship, asking yourself if your relationship would be able to withstand the trauma. If the answer is yes, then you haven’t reached the threshold yet and you try again. At some point you should be able to narrow down the actual threshold of your relationship as it relates to a series of events. Since we can apply a numerical value to events then I guess we could also determine the numerical value of the threshold of a relationship in this fashion.
So that’s the mathematics of relationships but unfortunately it’s not quite that easy. Humans have this little thing called emotion which has the ability to create a scenario where 1+1 just isn’t equal to 2. Emotions distort our vision of the real value that a particular event, positive or negative, has on a relationship. People like con-artists utilize this emotional catalyst or inhibitor on a regular basis to manipulate the perception of their actions as not to break the threshold of their relationship with the victim. That being the case, how can we determine the effect that an emotion will have on the perception of the value of an action within a relationship?
To determine the effect of an emotion would require a keen understanding of the person having the emotion, although I imagine that this could be manipulated as well. I really don’t want to get into attempting to understand the level of emotions which would dictate the effect of relationships, but I suspect that it could be done by statistically analyzing the hormones present relative to the expression of any given emotion and relating that back to the standard behavior of that particular individual. Let’s just leave it at the understanding that emotions mix everything up and require one of those imaginary numbers in our magic equation.
If we leave emotions out of the equation, then it should still be possible to place a numerical value on each action within our relationships and thereby create a net value of each relationship. Interestingly, if we were to aggregate the value of all our relationships then what does that number say about us as a social individual? I don’t really want to get into that question either but it’s something to think about.
Now that I’ve outlined the blueprint for relationships why does it still seem so difficult to decide if someone is worth the effort of knowing?
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