Olina Qian

I recently read a great book: 80-20 rules. Basically it talked about 20% of your time generate 80% of the result. Same principle. 20% of your input generate 80% of the revenue, which is very true, but I’ve never thought of this way.

In the middle of the book, it mentioned an interesting theroy I’d like to share with you, it is called ‘Village theory’:

Anthropologists stress that the number of exhilarating and important personal relationships that people can establish is limited. Apparently, the common pattern of people in any society is to have two important childhood friends, two significant adult friends, and two doctors. Typically, there are two powerful sexual partners who eclipse the others.

Most commonly, you fall in love only once, and there is one member of your family whom you love above all others. The number of significant personal relationships is remarkably similar for everyone, regardless of their location, sophistication or culture. This had led to the anthropologists’ “village theory”.

In an African village, all these relationships happen within a few hundred meters and are often formed within a short-period of time. For us, these relationships may be spread all over the planet and over a whole lifetime. They nonetheless constitute a village which we each have in our heads, and once these slots are filled, they’re filled forever.

So in California, a group of volunteers tried to used 5 years to work on testimony. They tried to help those girls who didn’t get chance to receive good education, met their significant others in their early ages, some of them even had kids when they were 13. Their boyfriends or husbands either dead or were put in jail when they were 20ish. So they had lots of life experience when they were young.

Those volunteers tried to help those girls to change their life, so they put them among well educated people and try to build up some new relationships. But after five years, they failed. Because those girls had too many experience already, even if they met good people now, their village has been filled in their early stage of life, so there is no more space for others and they don’t have ability to build a deep relationship with others now.

This is really an interesting theory. So if you have a pen and a piece of paper now, I’d like to have you write down people who lives in your village. And have a check to see if they bring you happiness all the time or painful experience all the time. If it is latter, maybe you should think to restructure your village, empty your heart and save some space for a better person.

After all, 20% of the people around you make the 80% of your happiness. You want to make sure you are surrounded by the great people and work out a great life experience.