TANSTAAFL

(originally posted April 11, 2008)
It’s an acronym. It stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” The term was coined by author Robert Heinlein. In days gone by, when food was cheaper, bars would set out food at lunchtime for patrons to help themselves at no extra charge. Of course, the lunch was not free. Its cost was figured into the price charged for the drinks.
Heinlein’s point was that anything that seems free has a price built into it, and we are kidding ourselves if we think we can have something for nothing.
Another way of expressing the same sentiment is that you can only get out what you put in.
Now, once explained, these are fairly simple concepts. Yet they seem to elude us in several important situations.
One place they seem to escape notice is in relationships. Am I saying that relationships come at a cost? Of course they do. The cost is to love your partner, as they love you. To respect your partner, as they respect you. To care for your partner, as they care for you.
You can only get out of a relationship what you put into it. If you ignore your partner, don’t expect them to be excited when you come home. If you snap at your partner, don’t expect them to be patient with you. If you aren’t willing to work at your relationship, how can you expect it to keep on running smoothly? We wouldn’t expect our cars to keep running smoothly without regular maintenance (although some people DO seem to expect that!)
Another place the TANSTAAFL concept seems to escape notice is in what we expect from our societies. We expect peace, but what do WE do to contribute to social peace? We want civility, not rudeness. But how thoughtful are we of the people around us. Do people who get off an escalator, and stop dead in their tracks to look around, expect civility from those behind them? Do drivers who speed up when someone is trying to enter their lane expect that they will be able to change lanes when they want?
You get out what you put in.
On an even broader level, we want crime-free societies. We’ve tried harsher laws, and more prisons, and that doesn’t seem to be achieving our goals. However, we know what conditions make crime more likely. So, why aren’t we demanding that officials take action on eliminating those conditions? The answer, of course, is money.
Fighting poverty, adequate housing, quality health care, good education, treating mental illness, all cost money. We don’t want to spend on money on those things. We want our money for ourselves, for our own uses. TANSATAAFL! You do not get safe streets and low crime-rates for nothing. You gets what you pays for.
When horrors like the Virginia Tech shootings occur, we are quick to vilify the gunman, to blame his rampage on “evil.” Yet, Cho Seung-Hui had been identified as mentally ill, and a danger to himself. By no stretch of the imagination did he receive adequate care. But, as a society, we are reluctant to take on responsibility for that. We don’t want the burden of identifying and treating people struggling with dangerous depressions or psychoses. But we don’t want them going on shooting rampages. And many people also don’t want gun sales or ammo sales restricted so that people in his condition won’t have access to them.
This sounds an awful lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. As if people were saying, “I want to be safe, but I don’t want to have to do the hard work to bring about real safety.” Well, sorry, but TANSTAAFL. We can continue to think of mental illness as an individual problem. But we will pay the price of that shortsightedness as communities.
When I was a young boy, John F. Kennedy was President of the U.S. I still remember the challenge he issued to his fellow citizens. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” My values were shaped, in part, by those words.
And so, ask not what your relationship can do for you. Ask what you can do for your relationship. Ask not what your society can give to you. Ask what you can give to your society.
But what about the role of other people? Should we be expected to take all the responsibility ourselves? No, of course not. But our own behaviour is the only thing we can control, and that is where our own work must start. We can, at least, be secure in the knowledge that we have paid our share of the bill.
Author Robert Fulgham (Everything I Need to know I Learned in Kindergarten, and It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It) has written, “I am not interested in what you value, I want to know what you will do. I don’t care what kind of world you want. I care what kind of world you are willing to work for.”
So, the next time you feel like complaining about your relationship, or about society, I would recommend that you ask yourself, what kind of relationship are you willing to work for? What kind of society are you willing to work for? And what is the work you are doing to bring them about?