“Sounds like you may be afraid your work isn’t worth enough to be paid for it.”
This was the actual sales pitch from an online marketer trying to convince me to pay him to promote my work. Some confusion about the line between marketing and therapy, it seems to me.
What if I think my work is worth enough not to get paid for it? Can the act of contributing be outside of quid pro quo, ‘this for that’? Can it be outside of WIIFM, ‘What’s in it for ME?’ What if I could let go of the back end—getting—to focus on the front end: giving?
Get is the eventual, all-engulfing slogan for addicts. I work with the recovery community. Addicts, as they lose identity, become 100% transactional, focused on the quo (“that” in quid pro quo). Getting crowds out everything and anything, even relationships, ethics, and family.
I’m not suggesting WIIFM leads to substance abuse. But it grabbed my attention that feeding this intense focus on getting as a substitute, or at least a ‘payment’ for giving, has generated much of what’s socially and culturally corrosive around us.
I’m not running for sainthood, and I claim no freedom from selfishness. I get sucked into WIIFM too. I like having things. Buying things gives me pleasure. But what I have started to realize is that Pleasure is not the issue here. The issue is Desire: What’s my why?
Desire is one of the strongest emotions we have and is ‘evolution’s agent for getting us to pursue goals repeatedly.’ Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire
Marc Lewis suggests that desire is a very powerful motivating emotion and that it is a learned behavior, which means we can unlearn and reprogram it.
Sometimes I hear the argument that goes like this: “If you do something kind for someone and it makes you feel good, you’re still being transactional; you’re just pretending there was no “quo” in order to feel better than us. And you’re doing is hypocritical because you’re virtue-signaling too!”
Can serving someone else transcend the quid pro quo formula? When I play with my cat, it does make me feel happy. But what if I play with my cat because it makes her feel happy? We’re engaging in a practice of community—it’s an honoring of mutuality, an homage to the sharing of enough. We receive all kinds of things when we serve others. Yet the act is not expectant but acceptant. We release the quo; it’s simply quid: THIS.That’s the new program: the front end—an act of grace—is sufficient, not necessary— the remittance at the back end. Whether it’s our cat or someone having a tough time.
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened any more. A. A. Milne
Could we balance WIIFM with WIIFC: “What’s in it for the community?” Or Connection? Or Continuity? Not to strive to be selfless but to be of service, useful regardless of perceived gain? If we feel happy, energized, content after doing something pro bono—literally ‘for the good’—our desire is on the front end, for someone or something (like a food bank) that needs caring. That’s very different than the desire for reward, which focuses on the back end. The first is always satisfying, the second can never be satisfied.
A story:
Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut were being entertained at the Shelter Island home of a hedge fund billionaire. Vonnegut leans over and asks, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday probably made more money than Catch-22 has earned in its entire history?”
“I’ve got something he’ll never have,” replied Joe
“What on earth could that be?”
“Enough.”
If I surrender to getting, there’s not enough of anything that will muffle the desire for more. Mark Yozart
I find that when I serve someone else, from a smile to helping change a tire, I don’t feel that demanding void for recognition and reward that arrives with WIIFM. The giving is sufficient. An act of being useful is singular, a unique flash that does not create its own void of the dying pleasure curve of get—the hunger of quo which is the antithesis of enough.
Most important, it brings a sense of community, whereas WIIFM creates an illusion of self-importance.
One brings us together, one pulls us apart.
