“I am strong and unaffected by anything.”

Most of us say this to ourselves and believe that we cannot be victims of this issue. I am talking about matters of the heart specifically heartbreaks.  I have learnt all too well that this is a false notion. The “hard” tend to fall the hardest.  Pun intended. We realize we are not as strong or as unaffected as we thought we were. We learn that we too can be vulnerable. We tend to hold onto the memories no matter how few they may be and hope that maybe things will go back to how they used to be. Change is part of life and we need to embrace it rather than oppose it. I guess we tend to take solace in what is familiar to us and that is why we hold on for too long even when we should not. That is why heartbreaks are very hard especially for one of the parties most of the times. This is especially when you see the other person has longed moved on and you are still where you are unable to move on. I have been thinking about this issue that we all face more than once in our life for most of us and I came up with a solution that might help. It is of course not full proof but I think it helps. The answer can be found in economics. I know you are all asking, “Economics??? How does that even relate to heartbreaks?”.

 I recently learnt about the concept of thinking marginally and thinking totally. These two ways of thinking result in different outcomes. Thinking marginally is all about thinking about one more while thinking totally is about thinking about the entire thing; more like do or die. You may ask how these two concepts relate to matters of the heart. I was in bed thinking and I had a eureka moment. When you think marginally you will be able to be positive about the whole heartbreak issue and get over it faster. The idea behind this way of thinking is that there will be another person out there for you.  To put it in economic terms there is one more person out there for you. This kind of thinking makes it easier to move on. On the other hand thinking totally makes it much harder to get over the heartbreak. You think that the person is only person in this world for you and thinking like this makes you hold on even more onto something that is already gone making it harder to move on.

So yes economics is very practical and yes it does apply to every situation in life. We just need to think beyond what we learn in class and relate it to our experiences in life. As my lecturer would say we need to start thinking marginally rather than thinking totally.