First Law of Equivalent Exchange

It's been a while since I saw the entire anime of Full Metal Alchemist but since day one that I watched it I loved it very much. I like the animation, the history and the personality of the characters. It has some military on the characters and I love that.

Recently I started the watch the Brotherhood version of FMA and probably with some different mindset, there is a sentence that got to my head:

Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. 

This is the alchemy's first law of equivalent exchange.
The reason it got into my head is probably because I have become more and more analytical and this mindset has been expanding to my personal life.

I believe that we (or I should say, I) follow this "law" in every single way that I can think of. From the most simplistic things like when we go to the store and buy something. I wouldn't call it lost but we give away money in order to get some supplies, food or miscellaneous. We get a medal when we finish a race because we gave away effort and time, or if we paid to get in the race.

The interesting thing comes when I try to explain something as complex as a relationship. Let's say a friendship. We often believe that we do thing without expecting anything in return but I believe that subconsciously to gain some trust, someone that can hear us, to get some help. We spend considerable amount of time in one's friend to (apparently) just to connect with that somebody.

As a side note, I would mention that we only connect with people that seems to benefit us in a way. Maybe we need people's approval so the easy thing to connect with is if people just stay around us. Or we need attention, is matter of having people's attention and/or admiration. I often see rich people that just want to have people around them so it is often that they spend considerable amount of money just to have them around. Therefore when the money factor is gone, so is the people.

Back to the main point of a friendship, things start to get complicated when we build a very good friendship such as a best friend. We might spend large amount of time just building trust, building companionship, building for the future so when the time comes and it is required that this best friend assist us in a way that only a best friend could. For example, to he/she to be the best man, or maybe to be there when we hit rock bottom and he/she would be the one that will get us out of them (or at least try in a comparable equivalent amount of time and effort)

Going in this same order of ideas I can mention when we reach a romantic relationship. Maybe it would be right to call it to lose something. Like when we give away our desire to have many sexual encounters and we commit to the one, called being loyal. Giving away such desire we expect to gain something in return that is most likely to be equal: for our partner to be loyal as well. We might give away the likes to buy clothes every single season and in exchange we build a better future by providing greatness to the children.

And I could quote plenty of examples but I want to reach one more complicated one. When we give away (or to lose) with apparent no reason to get/gain something in return. Probably because we gained first and now we have the feeling that we must repay to others what was given to us. Like when we had an splendid and beautiful childhood and now, decades later, we try to repay that that was given to us to our children. We might not even see the benefit of our repaying, but certainly we get the feeling in that very moment that, for the purposes of the law, is the equivalent something that we gain in return.

I have a perfect example, nowadays I host surfers (travelers of the world visiting my city) and with no apparent interest I just host them and let them stay in my place for a couple of days without being paid or immediate benefit. And "immediate" is the perfect word for this because, and as I have mentioned to any of those surfers, there might be a day when I go and travel other cities and then, in that moment in time, I will have many friends across the globe that will be able to host me in return for what I did for them. Of course I don't expect and I don't have plans to travel to all of those places, but in the immediate validation of this law, I feel the satisfaction and warmness of the people I host.

This is the moment in the FMAB where Edward shows his skills of alchemia, get his license as a State Alchemist and gets his nickname of Fullmetal Alchemist.

Do you think you have been applying this law in your life without even knowing?
Do you have any examples about it?
Feel free to share your thoughts.