The Formula of Love
I had a stimulating conversation with my friend Hans who runs a company a floor down from my office here in
Kaohsiung . Hans is a chemical engineer from
Germany , and has been in
Kaohsiung long enough to be more Kaohsiungnese than me. The topic: Love. Being a meticulously logical person that he is, he had created a formula for the Value of Love©, which is akin to the econometric formulas we all feigned to understand in college, and later became embarrassed to even earn a passing grade. The purpose of this formula was to systematically place a numerical value to love. It involves multiple variables and utilizes complex charts for prioritization. As he intends to write a book on this topic, I will not steal his thunder here by divulging trade secrets. But the discussion ignited another basic observation about human behavior: the need to organize an overwhelmingly chaotic world.
The world is naturally chaotic. We have a proclivity to put order to chaos. To achieve this order, we naturally organize concepts and ideas into formulas based on conclusions founded from experiences. The formulas or basic truths help us understand nebulous concepts such as the personality of someone we love, or personality of someone we love, … oh yeah…, and the personality of someone we love.
Let’s use an example. I once saw a proof for why girls are evil. Sorry girls, this is just exempli gratia. I mean no offense. It goes something like this:
It is given that: Girls = Time X Money
We all know that: Time = Money
Therefore: Girls = Money X Money = Money2
We also know that: Money = Root of all Evil = ÖEvil
Therefore: Girls = (ÖEvil)2
Conclusion: Girls = Evil
Another thoughtful observation to organize our love lives goes something like this:
There are 5 stages of a romantic relationship:
(1) Initial Attraction Boy meets girl.
(2) Discovery Boy and girl engage in dating activities to find out about each other.
(3) Conflict Boy and girl discovers things they dislike about each other.
(4) Conflict Resolution Boy and girl resolve conflict by coming to terms with what they dislike about each other.
(5) Commitment Boy and girl are promised to each other.
The conundrum is that for boys, they enjoy (1) Initial Attraction and (2) Discovery; but are more likely to leave the relationship upon first sign of (3) Conflict. For girls, they also enjoy (1) Initial Attraction and (2) Discovery; but then have the greater propensity to bypass directly to (5) Commitment.
These formulas provide perhaps a false perception of control. The control feels good. We perceive mastery of yet another mystery of life by applying simple structure to it. If love ad infinitum has a formula, it is undoubtedly complex. It must involve chaos theory for definitions. It must involve quantum math for a solution. Then again, perhaps it is as simple as rolling dice: pure chance. Conclusion: We should all learn something from
Las Vegas : “Whatever happens here [in life], stays here [in life]”.
