After ALL I’ve done for them…

How often have we heard those accusatory words? They usually convey a bit of a “moral” disappointment in someone. The attitude is that one has put in some effort and time and done a few things and IMPLICIT in that “giving” is a belief that it should come back to the giver. Now here’s the trouble I have with that. Giving with some unspoken (usually too high) expectation of a return isn’t in fact GIVING; it is INVESTING. I never saw anyone go up to a bank window and say “Here’s some cash. Take it!” One usually goes to a bank to make a deposit in one’s account and the terms of the return are clearly spelled out ahead of time (and are usually believed to be too low by the investor). I suspect that if we spelled out what the expectations were in advance for things we did for people two things would happen: (1) The receiver might not want the favor. The cost to them might just be too high. (2) WE ourselves might not feel so proud and self righteous as we do when we supposedly do “no strings attached” favors for people.

The truth is that GIVING means absolutely NO expectation of any return. The funny part is that such giving where the true reward is the feeling one gets from the act ITSELF usually comes right around and rewards you in ways you never thought of. It is the paradox of life I feel that those who don’t want to be REPAID get REWARDED many fold. The other thing I’d like to put out there while I’m on this topic is that WORK or THINGS don’t buy love and loyalty. ONLY LOVE buys LOVE and only genuine loyalty buys that. We all do things for people we don’t feel the slightest bit of either emotion for but we do it because we have to for one reason or another. Our bosses and co-workers don’t LOVE us or imply everlasting loyalty for us just because we do things with and for them. Its part of the work we do. But when we feel someone genuinely cares about us the ONLY thing we can do to show our appreciation is to reciprocate that feeling. No amount of “doing things” can replace that.