Economic Wisdom to Apply in Your Twenties

Chapter 71

Chapter 9 Section 2 You can't pick the "best" marriage partner
The 25-year-old Xiaojing decided to sell herself, so she mobilized relatives and friends to help introduce her.Relatives and friends were also enthusiastic and introduced many possible objects to her.

However, the problem comes again, there are too many people waiting for a blind date, how to find a suitable boyfriend as soon as possible among the many partners?Of course Xiaojing hopes that the person she chooses is good enough, even the best.But it is not easy to choose the best one among many people. What should she do to achieve this result?
As Fromm pointed out in the book "The Art of Love": "Love is not an instinct, but an ability that can be acquired through effective learning." So, how do we cultivate the ability to love, To find a lover who suits you?Maybe you think that Xiaojing's distress is easy to solve. Isn't picking a partner the same as picking apples in a basket?To pick the best one from a basket of apples, comparing them one by one is the best rule.

But dating is not the same as picking apples. Picking apples can compare the two. The apples are in the same basket and under your control, which means that these apples gather at the same time and place, waiting for you review.However, it is impossible for us to contact everyone when we choose a lover. After a person has dated you once, you have to make a decision whether to choose or give up. Once you choose one, you have no chance to date someone else ; and once you decide to eliminate this person, he is out forever.You can't date every candidate, tag them with a ranking, bookmark them, and pick the best one at the end.

Life is cruel like this. In most cases, opportunities wait for no one. When you choose left and right, and plan everything well, they may have already become someone else's wishful husband.

Each of us, like Xiaojing, hopes to choose the best marriage partner.There is also a concept of "optimal" in economics, which refers to the best result under restrictive conditions, for example, the maximum benefit when resources are limited.The optimization of economics recognizes the limitations of objective conditions. Optimization is not perfect so that there are no shortcomings at all, but to choose the best or relatively perfect one among the achievable results.

When it comes to optimality, we have to mention the famous "ear of wheat theory" in economics. "Wheat Ear Theory" comes from such a story: the famous thinker and philosopher Plato asked the teacher Socrates what is love?The teacher asked him to go to the wheat field first to pick the largest and most golden ears of wheat in the whole wheat field. He could only pick one time, and he could only go forward and not turn back.

Plato then did as the teacher said, and he walked out of the wheat field empty-handed.The teacher asked him why he didn't pick it up?He said: "Because I can only pick it once, and I can't go back. Even if I saw the biggest and most golden one, I didn't pick it because I didn't know if there was a better one ahead; Well, it turned out that the largest and most golden ears of wheat have long been missed. So, I didn’t pick anything.”

The teacher said: "This is love."

Then one day, Plato asked his teacher what marriage is, and his teacher told him to go to the woods first, and cut down the largest and most lush tree in the whole forest, which is most suitable for making a Christmas tree at home.During the same period, it can only be cut once, and it can only go forward and cannot turn back.

Plato then did as the teacher said.This time, he brought back an ordinary, not very lush, nor too bad tree.The teacher asked him: "How can I bring this ordinary tree back?" He said: "With the experience of last time, when I walked most of the distance with nothing in my hands, I saw that this tree was not too bad, so I bought it." Cut it off, lest you end up with nothing to bring back."

The teacher said: "This is marriage!"

Economics is a rational science, in which there is neither unrealistic idealism nor harsh perfectionism.We have to admit that perfect love and marriage are hard to come by, and what we can do when choosing a partner is to learn as much information about the opposite sex as possible through family and friends, and to choose with as much information as possible. The object that suits you——and once you have chosen it, then, like Plato who cut down the tree, walk out firmly with the tree you have chosen.

Pieces of Wisdom: A Taste of Philosophical Words

I have walked bridges in many places, seen clouds many times, and drank many kinds of wine, but I have only loved a person who is at his best age. --Shen Congwen
Live a happy life without the right person. ——Tao Jingying
At the right time, meeting the right person is a lifetime of happiness; at the right time, meeting the wrong person is a heartbreak; at the wrong time, meeting the wrong person is absurd; at the wrong time, meeting the right person, It is a lifetime sigh. ——Anonymous

Perhaps every man has had two such women, at least two.Marry a red rose and eventually, the red one will be a mosquito-blood smear on the wall, while the white one will still be "moonlight in front of my bed"; marry a white rose, and the white one will be a grain of rice sticky on your clothes; It is a cinnabar mole on the heart. ——Zhang Ailing
(End of this chapter)