Quid Pro Quo and Equivalent Trade

Get out of my head! That's right! I know what you're trying, you sneaky, adroit pseudo-psychiatrist.. you're trying to peek between the lines and into my head aren't you?

Oh... you're not my Mom? Still... can never be too careful.

My mother claims that a lot of things are revealed in a person's blog. As in apart from his/her vocabulary. Personal things. Like how many crazy ideas you get, your reading material in the loo, how much of a sociopath you are... if she's to be believed, those blokes at NSA and ISI and CBI and the VO2IA's (Various Other Overpaid Investigating Agencies) can trade in their cool black suits for beachwear, kick back and just monitor Blogger.com.

But that, of course, is for another day. Today we shall concern ourselves with the concept, an admittedly strange one, of equivalent trade. Rather, I shall concern myself with this singular, utopian dream and its impracticality, while you shall concern yourself with twiddling your thumbs while I ramble.

Any exchange, and by extention relationship, is ideally equivalent. Works both ways... you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Don't like it? Lets go our seperate ways, scratching our own backs till we find someone else to. Something like that. The problem, of course, is when one person prefers a pat on the head to a scratch. Understandable, really. There are as many types of humans as at least the number of canines, and I know at least one canine that calls each of those types his alma matter.

Anyway, who is to say how many pats makes a scratch. Or alternatively, how many scratches makes a pat. And then there's the question of the weather. You'd prefer a scratch in summer and a pat in winter. Or even a nice big hug. Sigh. Too confusing.

Anyway, the point being, that when two dissimilar people get close to each other, the concept of equivalent trade is as logical as this semester's Trical grading. Which, my roomie will tell you, is as logical as selling marked-up-then-discounted ice to an eskimo. A clever man will ripost that that's exactly what foriegn brands have been doing in Tiripur for the last fifteen years. But we Indians aren't exactly logical in matters of the west. Some vaasthu problem, probably.

Some people are made to talk, and others to listen. Like some are cheery and other glum. In such a case, you really wonder sometimes what keeps such people on talking terms. Shoudlnt they first be pulled towards each other, whiz to and fro under Inertia's idlying hand and finally explode in a brilliant white light? Not to mention give out gamma rays...

Some argue that the problem with equivalent trade is that it's too childish. Emotions, likes and dislikes are far from normalised. To say this is good and this is bad is positively kindergarden. The truth, though, is that everything IS equivalent trade. The cost of course, is defined by you, and you alone. Nothing path breaking or revealing, but it'll do us all a world of good to remember this. In the end, the most simple thing to remember is that you put something positive into a relationship and you'll get something positive out of it. As you sow, so you reap. Quid Pro Quo.

To cut through all the crap, don't be an idealistic little kid and complain that you always cheer up the other person when they're down, why can't you be dealt a bit of that hand. Remember that somwhere else, when you didn't notice, you were allowed the long end of the stick. In the end, it all evens out. Quid Pro Quo. Equivalent Trade. But only if you can look at the larger picture.