my friend and roommate from another life posted this photo on her blog:
i think it's kind of nutty to look at some of the evolutions of different logos - some have changed drastically but others have only morphed into a more modern version of their previous self. see bmw.
anyways...
so one of my classes in law school is called legal professions, and in this class we participate in the study of law as a profession. (gee can you imagine?) it's sometimes tedious, and usually frustrating, but on occasion, i do find it worthwhile if only for the slight escape the class provides from the humdrum routine of reading and taking notes.
one of the projects my group worked on recently had to deal with a hypothetical situation of a corporate client who made a mistake. in our scenario, the corporate client was an automaker and they created defective CD players. one of our solutions was to extend the warranty on the CD player from 1 year to 2 years - thus, furthering our advocacy of corporate responsibility and extending coverage from 2% of products to 34% of products.
warranties are suppose to guarantee the general public a certain sense of reliability on a corporation in the usage of their product. we buy something, and depending on what the warranty says, we are usually offered a period of time where we are guaranteed a certain level of performance. if the product fails to perform as such, then we have some recourse for either getting a replacement or something else. sometimes i wonder if in building relationships with people in our lives, if we don't offer (and are offered) warranties on how each individual will "perform". and if such warranties exist; are they really any good?
it's probably impossibly to go into any kind of a relationship (be it a friendship or one in the more romantic sense) without an exchange of "warranties"; or maybe "promises" - to put it in less scientific terms. as the relationship develops pass the initial stages of curiosity and superficiality, the terms of the warranties seem to implicitly change. our expectations of the other person evolves, and likely their expectation of us evolves as well. we learn that we can depend on each other, lean on each other, and expect a certain level of performance from the other person.
however, like i've often moseyed over before ... as much as we often like to make promises, and have every intention of keeping them, we humans are complicated - complex creatures. if behavioral economics has taught me anything, it's that humans are utterly unpredictable. we, unfortunately, cannot be put into a box.
this often translates into making promises, that we have no way of keeping, muddling and frustrating the presumptions we have of each other in our relationships. many times we expect the other person to act a certain way because we have grown to have that expectation, but unfortunately we cannot always depend on them to come through and perform in the manner which we would like. and what's worse - we don't really have any means of recourse. humans relationships are not products that can be purchased and sold, and we can't ask for a replacement or a refund. easy solutions are really no where to be found.
so - what do we do? my mother always said to me that people cannot be depended upon. "the only one you can depend on is yourself." is this the solution? maybe - but i don't want to think so.
just because one end of the expectation spectrum isn't sustainable doesn't necessarily mean we have to immediately conclude that people are just not dependable either. just because people aren't perfect doesn't mean you can't depend on them either. if that were the case, i wouldn't have the kind of relationships i do. the lasting friendships/relationships we witness are proof that a third way of dependability must exists.
to be honest, i'm not quite sure what that third way of dependability is. and to be trite, it just might be something you have to discover for yourself. it's understanding your expectations, understanding what others expect of you - and filtering all of that through the realism of what our individual limitations and imperfections are.
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this was after a long absence and actually i'm not sure if i have any readers left ... but, if there are any remaining readers, or casual observers i think the next one will be better.
