Units of measurement

Today at Theories of the Media class, Mr Abraham (sweat machine) jolted me out of my reverie with a question.

“ABEL. How do you measure love?”
To which I answered without a blink, “You can’t”.

Now, we all know, theoretically speaking, you can’t measure something as abstract as love. There won’t be units to gauge its volume or depth. But if we are honest with ourselves enough, we do ‘measure’ it, don’t we?

Unconsciously, the person who spends more time with you, shoots more sms-es to your phone, buys you more gifts is perceived to have more love for you than the one who did all that but less. You reason that these actions do indicate in some way their level of affection and are by-products of their care.

Picture with me, if the subconscious mind could speak…

“Is this person your friend?”
“Urm… let me see. 3 hours of love, 4 presents of care, 2 and a quarter smses of affection, half a pat on the back, one sentence of encouragement… I’m not sure, because I didn’t receive 5 seconds of smiles, man.”

That’s how we gauge who are our friends and not. Suddenly the one who sends one sms short of the quota doesn’t love you. You then question why people love certain things because they seem to fall short based on the standards you have set.

“People should love dogs instead of cats because they are more useful, guard the home and are loyal.”
“I like that person because he knows how to play the flute with his nose and can dance on his toes while eating jelly. I don’t like the other person because he can only play the flute with his mouth and not with all the other parts of the human anatomy that can release air.”
“You’re not my close friend because you bought me two things only so far. When you buy 1 more, you would be my half friend-half close friend ok?”

Impossible and immature! You say.

But you do it nonetheless. People are guilty of measuring love eventhough they know it can't be measured. Think about it.