The equation of life doesnt come simpler than this! Last Friday, in an Economics session - I learnt this - in as many words - "the elasticity of supply and demand".
Simply put, it means eat as much as you are hungry and when you consume just the right moment, you will have that indicator! Its called Belch point!
Over the week, I was all alone at home, family was in Mumbai. Reminded me of the "Robinson Crusoe" days in Bangalore and London - using only a part of the apartment - with yummy food from the "home delivery" route! The period of solitary refinement also helped think about my college days - when there was an era of friendship, fights and festivity-less breakups! I am not talking only about myself. Its also a story of a good group of friends and not so good friends around me in college! Observing most of them - from a distance - one could have an unbiased opinion of what was going wrong, what was going right and what was simply not even taking the name of going!
Typical trends of an economic cycle include the initial phase of growth with increasing growth rates. This corresponds to the new found interest and energy levels, when we meet someone special or potentially special! We get to know them well, it ofcourse take time to finely present mainly our "pure positive" side to him/her. It can be said that during this phase - we hardly get angry or impatient - even if it meant waiting endlessly in the rain for the dude to turn up!
Then comes the period of growth with decreasing growth rates. This is economics. In life, we slowly tend to have got a complete perspective of the individual in question and we are forming our opinions on where we want to take this. Its not anyone's fault that this phase tends to be the way it is! Lets safely blame the economics theory for it!
Then comes the third and most important phase - growth is at zero percent or tending to zero percent! Voila - we are at the decision point! Its either a make or a break, at this phase! From this point on, either it can be a period of indecision or status quo - in the relationship - no one wants to take the last move - or - the decision is made and its time to wrap up!
In all this fun and frolic, in a typical economic model, everything is measured in Dollars, Euros and Pesos! In real life, we measure this whole experience in terms of smiles, tears and utter pathos!
Enter the Theory of Elasticity!
What does this say - this says if the price of a product is increased or decreased, there is a definite impact on the supply or demand of the product! (Let me spare you the pain of going further on this!)
So, if for example, there is a certain relationship in consideration. Lets say - father and son! If there is a specific decrease in the time, importance or quality of experience by the son, as the father is extremely busy on a given week, there is an immediate impact seen in the behavioural pattern of the son! That would be: unable to cope with the change initially, but gradually getting impatient, upset and angry with poor busy dad. (Being a dad isnt an easy job, let me tell you!) So what happens effectively is that - the elasticity of relationship has an direct proportion between the experience of the son and the time spent by the father!
Lets take the ever green example of two individuals in college! Raj wants to be good friends with Revathi! Raj is putting in a lot of time and importance but nothing really seems to be clicking! Plotted on a supply/demand curve, this would a case of supply being more than the demand in question. Hence it seems like Raj is overdoing it or in extreme cases, even seen as stalking the poor gal! The more he does it, the further away Revathi would go! Though good at heart, he is poor in Economics and hence cant get the Belchpoint right!
Applying a touch of Indian Cinema here, instead of products "ice-cream" and "cinema tickets", there is increase in "wine" and "whiskey". This impact of decrease in demand for one product influencing the demand for another product - is called "cross elasticity of products"
To make it interesting, lets take a different pair now - Priya and Prakash while the context remains the same! Priya is interested in being friends with Prakash but has a certain level of demand - Prakash doesnt meet it, either in terms of the quality of experience or time! What happens here is that the elasticity is inversely proportional, because you just dont know whats the upper limit! You are always on first gear in a F1 race! The slower you are, the bigger the task of catching up in the race, leaving alone winning!
There are a lot of exceptions in this elasticity theory! The most prominent one being, George (on debut) wanting to be friends with a Miss College XYZ - Sherry! (I should stop watching Indian movies!) Leave alone the money factor - what is more important to note is that George will want to do all that is needed, irrespective of quantity of time or the importance Sherry attaches to him! This kind of blind "impractical" approach is called "Perfectly Inelastic Demand" - in Economics. No matter, if she meets him or even knows him - George's committment and interest remain absolutely intact!
Dont want to write a book on this, do I?! Its also getting too late in the nite!
Be it any relationship - with a friend/parent/neighbour/stranger - and "money and social status" remaining constant - the first and foremost step is to understand the demand curve and the supply curve and find the belchpoint! Demand curve being the emotional expectations of your target partner and Supply curve being the energy and effort you invest into the relationship.
Once you know what the belchpoint is, it becomes very easy to evaluate, what it takes to get the attention 100%. From then on, its a simple case of maintaining the effort and energy at the same levels or working it out - depending on the elasticity!
Simple, scientific and hopefully succint! This economics crash course should help you analyse your relationships, using basic graph skills (remember your 6th Std. Maths Teacher who always gave a 10 mark problem for graphs) and mathematical analysis of where you want to take it!! If you still dont make considerable progress - its absolutely inexorable! I wonder if there should be a subject on "Applied Economics" in schools - well lets keep that topic for another weekend!
