The Law of Equivalent Exchange

I had to share this. A friend and fellow student at Flagler shared this with me. Her name is Kim Hartman. Here is what she writes, I hope you are as impacted by it as I am.
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With two final exams left before graduation, I coincidentally spent some of my Thanksgiving break watching a series relevant to completing college. The provocative and emotional show, “Full Metal Alchemist,” has gotten heavy airplay on Cartoon Network and has earned huge popularity since its debut.

FMA’s overriding theme is the law of equivalent exchange. The series parallels alchemy with life, as the characters learn and explore the true meaning of the law. Before every episode, these words are spoken:

“Human kind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s first law of equivalent exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world’s one and only truth.”

Why do students put themselves through mind-boggling tasks, stressful situations, challenging relationships and diligent studies? Why do we spend thousands of dollars and millions of hours working for a higher education?

Because we have faith that it will all pay off. Because we believe we will reap greater rewards for having gone through it than if we hadn’t. Because we believe our hard work will breed success. It’s the law of equivalent exchange. That anything worth attaining is going to take a lot of work to get it.

This is a wonderful concept, and the reason we fight to overcome the obstacles we face over the entire course of our lives. But consider the final sentence of the opening. Is the law of equivalent exchange the world’s one and only truth? Is it idealistic to believe that all of this will always pay off?

I hate to consider the alternative.

I don’t like thinking about all of the people who work so hard but still live in poverty. Or the people who are born into wealth but have never worked for anything. I don’t like thinking about the college graduates who are standing in unemployment lines. Or the people with prestigious jobs who were only hired because of nepotism. I don’t like thinking about the long-term marriages, relationships and friendships that have failed or dissipated.

I hate to consider that the law of equivalent exchange isn’t true. It’s like reporting on a story for two months but then having it never run. But as much as I hate it, I must face the fact that it isn’t always true. That there is, indeed, inequality and injustice in the world.

But the law is flawed, as the series eventually reveals, in the way that it only looks to the outcomes in determining if an exchange was equivalent. It doesn’t take the means into account — only the ends.

I’ll tell you a personal experience. When I was a high school senior, my disease relapsed so severely that I lost the entire school year. I graduated through a program called Hospital Homebound. Considering all of the accomplishments I earned, I remember feeling as if all of my work was in vain. For three years, I had worked so hard — put forth so much — only to end up bedridden and homebound. I felt like it was all for nothing.

But I had been shortsighted. I had only looked to the outcomes in measuring the equivalency. What I hadn’t realized is that the experience instilled great strength into me. With my adversity came fortitude. The fortitude I needed to get through college despite medical hardships.

Without the kind of senior year I endured, it’s possible that I wouldn’t have had the resilience to bounce back after two semester withdrawals. I did get something in return, after all. I just didn’t have the foresight to see it then.

Now, I’m not trying to give the “It’s the journey not the destination” speech. And I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. So many wonderful and horrible things happen for no reason at all. But I will say that whether the law of equivalent exchange is true or not all depends upon your interpretation.

So whether or not I start out at my dream job, I won’t ever consider my five and a half years at Flagler to have been in vain. Every person I’ve met has changed me. Every article I’ve written has become a part of me. Every task I’ve taken on has advanced me. My peers and professors have touched me, taught me and moved me. They’ve made the impossible possible.

Flagler has rocked me and left me a better person than I was before. The experiences and values I’ve gained have been immeasurable. I have been transformed, both personally and professionally, into an imaginably greater individual than when I began.

On every level, I’ve been educated.

And so I’ll leave you with the closing words of FMA, which extends and revises the already stated paragraph:

“Human kind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy’s first law of equivalent exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world’s one and only truth.

But the world isn’t perfect. And the law is incomplete. Equivalent exchange doesn’t encompass everything that goes on here, but I still choose to believe in its principle. That all things do come at a price — that there’s an end, and a flow, a cycle.

That the pain we went through did have a reward, and that anyone who’s determined and perseveres will get something of value in return, even if it’s not what they expected. I don’t think of equivalent exchange as a law of the world anymore — I think of it as a promise…”

This being my final official blog as a Flagler College student, I thank you all for being a part of my college years. You have added so much value to my life and demonstrated the reward of equivalent exchange.