How can we define love?? can we really know what is love??
Everyone might think that love is some kind of emotion or chemical reaction that releases from our body. Till today, no one can perfectly define love. To me love is very logical. I don’t mean that people will behave rationally and logically when they fall in love, however what makes people fall in and out of love is very logical.
Although many people aspire to be more unconditionally loving toward their fellow man. To be honest, there are people we like, people we don’t like, people we love, and people we hate. As we meet people throughout our lives, only a small percentage of these people can win our love/heart. Why is this?
Actually its very simple, this can be explained using simple economics theory. Individuals have needs and desires and a rational individual will do everything it takes to fulfill their needs and desire as long as the benefit they receive is higher or constant with their costs.
When we meet people who fulfill our needs and desires, we like them. If they do a damn good job at it, we fall in love with them. This may make love sound very selfish. However, all of us knew that love is selfish. If we get what we want, we fall in love (as long as we don’t mind giving back what the other party wants). If we don’t get what we want, or don’t want to give what they want in return, love doesn’t happen.
WHAT IS TRUE LOVE?
The above concept is when we ASSUME that individuals are rational and act only to benefit them. In reality, not all individuals act rationally. There are people that will act in ways that their costs exceed their benefits. To some people, this can be defined as true love. According to an anonymous writer, he defines True Love as “True love is when you put your partner's interests above your own. It is when you will do anything to see them happy, even things that may go against what you believe. It is called sacrifice and true love is nothing without it”
In my version, I define True Love as “Each party EQUALLY contribute to their relationship (in terms of Time, Space, Emotion and ect). In the short run, the contribution of both might not be equal but in the long run, their contribution should be constant or if they are not equal, the values should not have a gap of 10% or more”
Why is this?? From what I know, Love do not HAPPEN if only one of the party is trying his/her best to make the relationship work while the opposite just sit there can receive all the benefits. If u guys call this true love, I call this “ a torture that will last a lifetime”.
Can we express love in a mathematical way??
According to Shaki, B. love has an inverse relationship with fear.
Love = 1/Fear
“This inverse relationship implies the more Fear you have within you, the less Love you will have and the less Fear you have the more Love you will have. Think about how you feel at the beginning of a relationship when everything seems so wonderful and neither of the lovers have expressed any of their Fears. As the relationship progresses, the ugly part begins to emerge, and when it becomes difficult to deal with, you find Love disappearing faster than a runaway train going downhill.”
From my point of view, The biggest fear in a relationship is “Fear of Losing the other party”. If this fear exists in a relationship, does this mean that an individual’s LOVE will diminish if they fear that their partner will leave them some day?? I guess not.
Another equation that I derived from an anonymous author is :
LOVE = (Time x Space x Energy) ^ Will (^ = exponential power)
Time – is the biggest test of your relationship showing how long your Love has been able to hold the heat without melting.
Space – represents how much space you have had to express yourself as you are. When you cannot be who you are, the relationship ultimately collapses because there is no freedom for you beyond its confines. You feel bottled and throttled into a trap with nowhere to express your natural individuality.
Energy – initially I had chosen “matter" as this variable but then realized Quantum Physics describes all matter as energy. Energy represents all the things you have invested into the relationship
Will – describes your willpower. It is the most influential factor which either exponentially increases or decreases all the other variables. Positive constructive will empowers your Love and negative deconstructive will destroys. Let's look at an example. Your partner may provide all the material needs of life, but if he/she bites you with sarcastic comments, your Love thermometer will fall as if you are standing in a deep freezer.
This is fairly good equation to express love but its not perfect. In this equation, we will sometimes over-value “LOVE”. If the 3 variables are multiplied together with the power of “Will” we will tend to overstate the value of love. Therefore, we should rank the 3 variables and re-write the equation. How do we rank it?? The rankings of the 3 variables vary from individuals to individuals. As I had explained earlier, individuals have different needs and desires (The importance of a variable might be different among individuals.). For instance, personally I think that what I had contributed in the relationship is very important, followed by time and space. Therefore, my equation should be :
LOVE = (Space^1 x Time^2 x Energy^3) x Will
If we were to apply a value to the variables the difference would be : -
Assume - Space = 5 Time = 7 Energy = 9 Will power = 5
LOVE = (Time x Space x Energy) ^Will
LOVE = (7 x 5 x 9)^5
= 3.101 x 10^12 or 3.101 x 1,000,000,000,000 or 3,101,000,000,000
LOVE = (Space^1 + Time^2 + Energy^3) x Will
LOVE = (5^1 x 7^2 x 9^3) x 5
= 893,025
Can u observe the difference??
However, the hard thing is we cant really apply an exact value to the variables above therefore to calculate the value of love will be almost impossible
*I acknowledge that this essay contains some secondary resources*
Writen by : Elipse KHOR
