Oftentimes when I make a large meal, I put some of it in a reusable container and give it to a neighbor. It is a form of food storage, because my generosity is usually reciprocated in the form of free food at a later date. And as an added bonus, both my neighbor and I get to try different foods. This is a form of reciprocity. It is not quite a transaction, because there is a time-delay. Additionally, I don’t know what my neighbor is making in return, if anything. But I enjoy making food for people, and I trust my neighbors.
When I notice my coworker has too much work on their plate and I have extra bandwidth, I offer to lighten the load for them. We have a working relationship of trust, so when I become overloaded or otherwise unavailable, they are happy to repay the favor. This results in a more consistent work load for both of us and strengthens our working relationship. Without this form of reciprocity in the workplace, everyone works in their own silos, where performance is just punished with more work.
Taking an Uber or Lyft to the airport can be quite expensive. So, sometimes I ask a trusted friend to drop me off or pick me up. I pay in gratitude. This imbalance creates a bond, a temporary inequality that does two things: 1.) it makes my friend want to maintain the relationship to receive a favor in return, and 2.) it makes me want to find ways to repay the favor, which requires that I get to know what my friend needs. The temporary imbalances that are characteristic of reciprocity are responsible for nearly every feeling of affection and friendship. Without reciprocity, it is like walking around in a garden of statues and pretending they are alive.
In conversation, if one speaks for the whole time, it is a lecture, and if one listens the whole time, it is a podcast. If two people speak at the same time it is chaos, and if two people listen at the same time it is meditation. Communication, specifically dialogue, is essentially a practice of reciprocity. You have to listen to others before you can expect others to listen to you. You have to allow for an imbalance, but then pull it back to center. So, if I find myself talking too much in a conversation, I shift the topic, asking the other person a question that allows them to speak for some time. As a result, the information flow goes back and forth; it is in the give and take of conversation that people get to know each other.
When I am driving down the road and reach an intersection, I stop if the light is red, and go if the light is green. When the light is green, I am grateful that the cars going the other way are stopped. They are sacrificing their time to allow me clear passage, under the expectation that when the light is red for me I will repay the favor. Without this reciprocity, cost-efficient at-grade intersections would not be possible: all intersections would have to be grade-separated interchanges, typical of high-speed interstate freeways. Same goes for standing in any line; I wait my turn not because it is enjoyable, but because I expect that others will also wait their turn.
Even what appears to be a transaction is often, at closer glance, a form of reciprocity. When you pay for a bag of apples at the grocery store, you may think you are trading two items of equal value: money and fruit. But money has no intrinsic value; it is a debt. You are simply giving the grocery store owner the right to receive a favor from someone else. Unlike normal reciprocity, which strengthens the bond between giver and receiver, money has the opposite effect: it frees the people involved in the exchange to separate. The bond instead is formed between the people involved and the institution that backs the currency; it encourages a broad form of indirect reciprocity. You do favors for people in exchange for favors from others, with currency acting as a sort of symbol that recognizes your past service. Therefore, money allows for reciprocity to occur at a much broader scale. It acts as a surrogate for trust, and thus using it to pay for a favor is an implicit admission of a lack of trust.
Breathe in – breathe out. Reciprocity is all around you. You take oxygen from the trees, and return carbon dioxide. They receive the carbon dioxide and give back oxygen. It isn’t immediate; there is a delay. The length of that delay, and the depth of the imbalance, puts a strain on the relationship, but if the trust is strong enough, the relationship will not break. Trust can be measured by the depth and length of the imbalances that can be sustained in a relationship, and reciprocity is the proof that the trust is warranted.
How do you practice reciprocity in everyday life?