16 feb

There is a selfish part about love. I think I always understood this. Only by respecting yourself you can become valuable for someone else. I remember thinking about these things when I was following classes in macro or micro economics. Trying to translate the theories of substitution or assimilation into helpful skills in finding the right partner. I learned a whole lot from it, but my wandering mind didn’t get me any kind of brilliant grades.

Philip Larkin writes about it. The real question for him is not to be selfish, which seems like a given, but to be selfish enough.

The difficult part of love
Is being selfish enough,
Is having the blind persistence
To upset an existence
Just for your own sake.
What cheek it must take.

So you get punished for being selfish, regarding love. But one has to do it. The benefit from being selfish (enough) is higher than the costs of being punished for being selfish. Mark the word ‘enough’. It seems to me the critical word.

But love is not only about being selfish enough. At least not in the world of Larkin. I am not sure if economics has an answer to this. I kind of wished I would have known about Larkin’s poem when I was waisting my time during those boring and massive classes I was following. Larkin died in the year I started studying economics, so this poem Love must have been written at the time, but it is one of his unpublished poems, so maybe I just could not have known about it at the time.

This is what Larkin has to say about being unselfish enough.

And then the unselfish side –
How can you be satisfied,
Putting someone else first
so that you come off worst?
My life is for me.
As well ignore gravity.

He seems to be puzzled by the fact that it is necessary to come of worst, by putting someone else first. It seems so unnatural that it is like ignoring gravity, if I read these lines right.
Part of the problem is that he doesn’t use the word enough. But if one has to be selfish enough, one also has to be unselfish enough, it seems to me. These things hold eachother in balance. When one wants to be very selfish, as compensation one needs to be very unselfish (in other things). And it might just turn out right. When an apple falls from a tree, gravity kicks in. But for the apple it is a big difference if there is a matress laying on the ground, or just hard soil.

Love is about being selfish enough and at the same time being unselfish enough. It seems to be two pretty simple mathematical equasions with selfishness on one side and unselfishness at the other. The real tradeoff might be between the amount of unselfishness being offered and the amount of unselfishness being requested from the other one in the love relationship. And the same things counts for selfishness. It would be good to remind oneself that the crucial word is ‘enough’. One has to be selfish enough and unselfish enough. But in the trade off it must be possible to find the ideal partner.

And then: Love is so much more than a spark between partners. There is a world of love to share between parents and children, brothers and sisters, other family members, genuine friends. But the remarkable thing is that it could be assessed in the words of larkin, and could be comprehended in that way.

But Larkin wasn’t finished

Still, vicious or virtuous,
Love suits most of us.
Only the bleeder found
Selfish this wrong way round
Is ever wholly rebuffed,
And he can get stuffed.

Well, this is incomprehensible to me. I find the end a little rough, but do not get lines 3-5. But it is only because of respect for Larkin that I quote his whole poem. Verses one and two give me plenty of thought, and satisfaction. Enough, that is what it is all about. It is well worth reminding myself of it.