Equivalent Trade/Exchange

Was watching Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Fullmetal Alchemist) with my brother this morning and the term "equivalent trade" was mentioned many times throughout the whole anime. Basically it means in order to obtain something you need to give something of equal value in exchange for it. That was essentially the rule in the world of alchemy, at least until the Elrich brothers' dad (Hohenheim of Light) showed up and refuted this whole equivalent trade thingie. Just as a backgroud, Hohenheim lived for approx 400 yrs, each time transfering his soul from one aged/rotting body to the next using fragments of the philospher's stone he created approx 400 yrs back. Took him this long to reach this conclusion...

I must admit I almost fell for the equivalent trade theory until Hohenheim showed up and declared there is no such thing as equivalent trade in alchemy nor in the world. For a moment I realised I live everyday without much thought. I rush to work, I rush to beat the stupid max 30 mins waiting time for each patient, I rush to meet friends for dinner else I rush home for dinner. Basically I'm beat at the end of each day, and the brain refuses to think any further. I'll just take things as presented to me except when it comes to drug information. I think the worse is I knew long ago that there is no such thing as equivalent trade yet when I stepped into the workforce and started getting drunk with routine work, I lost bits of who I was and blended in with the unthinking masses.

The Chinese have a saying: "if you lack talent, you work hard to make up for the lack of it". The concept is similar to equivalent trade. However, I've never believed that and don't think I'll ever believe that. If equivalent trade is to be true, then I would have scored A1 in my History exams, but that was not to be the case. No matter how hard I studied, the best I ever received was an A2 while some of my classmates who did not studied any harder than the previous exams managed to score A1 all the time. My comfort was that I hardly spend time studying for Math and Chemistry, but I scored A1 most of the time. :D

Just as an ending note, working hard to make up for the lack of talent is possible, except there is no rule to say those with talent are not working hard. If they work just as hard, comparatively, those with no talent will still appear to have no talent.