How Much is Too Much?

The title is the Ideo question of the day.

Here is my short and simple answer.

If you live in the area described as the west, then whatever you have is too much.

Looking at that from another perspective though, I've always appeared to be 'unlucky in love.' Really I'm just British and I like to feel hard done by, so I don't make my own life easy. There once was a guy, who was a dream more than anything, that once used the sentence 'Vikki, you're too much,' to describe me.

And I am.

I am too much. But surely one day I won't bee too much for someone. I think the original perpetrator of the phrase meant it as a term of endearment, but when you already know that you are 1. Over keen, which leads to 2. Over share and 3. Over care, then it just comes as a reminder when someone else picks up on the fact that I am too much.

So what do I do that makes me too much? And how does that relate to society?

We have a mindset that to gain someone's affection we lavish them with gifts. Our society teaches that to have is to be, which means that the more things I possess the more alive I am. So It's only natural that in order to win some kind of competition we would want to give gifts and do things for those that are the object of our desire, because we want to make them 'be' - or just feel alive, and then they will attribute that life to the giver.

This is not a set in stone method, and then when you are competing with a million other boys and girls for this person's affection we start to up our game and we will start giving gifts of a more thoughtful nature or an ephemeral nature - things like service and emotional insight.

But where do we stop? How much is too much to have or to give? Because at one point the receiver will just have too much and an adverse effect will occur. I think too much arises when some does not equal the desired product of returned effection. So too much occurs when there is not 1. A balance between ephemeral and corporeal things and 2. When the product is lower than the sum.

And who said maths wasn't useful?

In layman terms, if I give too much and don't get the reaction and response I want then to keep giving is too much.