Law of Reciprocity

Reciprocity, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours, hand in hand, yin to yang, returning the favor, is usually a good thing. It's nice as humans that if someone does something nice to you then you turn around and do something nice back. It's interaction at it's best. Sometimes however it's just too much.

Every year, like a lot of people, I like to bake holiday treats. I spend two days or so baking up lots of sweets that we like to eat. I bake and bake until I don't want to bake anymore. Sometimes we even make fudge and buckeyes which aren't baking, but making.

Anyway we have a tradition of putting together plates or bags of these things along with some other stuff like cocoa, tea, microwave popcorn bags (we are a houseful of cub scouts after all!). We go out after dinner one evening, bundled up into the cold, to deliver the goodies to some of our neighbors. It's our Christmas walk. We do this because we enjoy it and I like to bake more than we can eat!

But...within the next few days we get holiday stuff from some of our neighbors. Now this is nice and all, but I always wonder if it's because they feel the need to match us. To play the reciprocity game. I take on a bit of guilt because I don't want someone to feel pressured to reciprocate. It's an odd thing to dwell on, I know. But I do feel this twinge of discomfort because by starting the interaction I've possibly set in motion some sort of requirement for someone else. This is not the intended result!

A similar thing happened a couple of weeks ago. We had a little snow storm resulting in a powdering of snow on our driveways. My kids, for fun, decided to go outside and sweep and shovel our driveway and the driveways of some of our neighbors. After having finished several driveways our next door neighbor decided to reward the kids with $3 each. While that was sweet, it completely changed how my kids viewed their endeavor. All of a sudden it was a money making scheme...a way to earn the money for a Lego Death Star, rather than the act of kindness it all started out as.

It's hard sometimes to let it go. I know that I too feel the need to reciprocate when someone does something for me. Sometimes it's appropriate. Sometimes it's enough to say thank you.

I've decided that next year we'll do things just a bit differently. Instead of the Christmas walk where we give out our goody bags with our Christmas card in it we're going to elf people. Not that um...weird online thing people do with the dancing elves and their own pictures. This will be like ghosting someone at Halloween, ding dong ditch leaving treats behind, but with Christmas goodies. A new tradition.