Recently, I’ve been going over exponents with my students for the big math state test next week. Not sure if it was the chalk hitting my nose or the positivity I’ve surrounded myself with, but I’ve been thinking lots about this idea of love. Thus, I was prompted to put out this thought a couple of days ago:

Love is the base, not the exponent.

Here’s my reasoning:

Let’s assume the value of love you have is greater than 1 (love being a variable), and that your exponent is the amount of people in your circle of influence (you can have positive or negative people, in character of course). I figure that the more love a person has for oneself, and the more positive people there are around that person, the more love there is to spread around and about. So, let’s say your love rating is 1.25, a small increment of love barely approaching love for anyone else. Well, if there are three positive people in your life (1.25 ^ 3), your love factor approaches 2 (1.953125 to be exact.) If you’ve got a love rating of 10, and four positive people to share that with, that’s enough to shoot your love rating to 10,000.

Love really grows quickly, and a collective always multiplies love, not just adds.

Let’s take some of the special cases for this theorem, ones that I find rather interesting.

If you’ve only got a love rating of one (or “one love,”), then no matter how many people, positive or negative, you have around you, then you’ll always that one love, and it will always be positive. But it can’t grow until you increase how much love you have for anyone.

Similarly, no matter how much love you got for yourself (where love can be any number you like), if the amount of people privy to that love is 0, then indeed it stays one love.

Consider: if you have any love for yourself (love > 1), but negative people all around you, then you still have positive amounts of love, but it dwindles the more negative people you have around you. It never reaches zero, and thus, there is hope.

Now, for my math folk out there, I still haven’t considered the case where love is greater than zero but less than one because most of what I just said works exactly the opposite, but I think one of my math whizzes will get it together.

Not quite QED yet, but this much is certain: love isn’t just something we can keep to ourselves, though it’s important to have lots of self-love. In a time where many of us are celebrating the lack of life rather than reflecting, we have to spread peace and love wherever possible. It’s equally important to find sources of self-worth and care in order to do that. Love should be everyone’s base, and really, that’s where it all starts.

Where is your source of love? Did my love theorem make sense to anyone else? I hope so.

Jose, who’s really self-reflective …