“Why
do we give if we don’t get something?”
That
sentence pushed my thought, really. It elicited my curiosity more and more. I
took long minutes to define that very question. Only define. So, what was
basically the meaning of ‘give’ and ‘get’ to that question? What did
‘something’ mean? Was it big thing or small thing? And stuff like that. Those
‘definition things’ left me with my big conclusion; subjective!
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| pict from here |
Well,
it is pretty hard not to involve our own perspective, our subjectivity which
will cause any pros and cons related to our idea, in writing. But what you are
reading now will drive you to it, to my subjectivity.
Back
to the question! “Why do we give if we
don’t get something?”
I
will correlate this question to one of psychology theory with behaviorism
school of thought. In behaviorism, it is said that people will do something in
return of stimulus they get. In simple, stimulus will elicit the response. For
example, your little brother who loves candy will cry if you take it. The
response is crying and it appears because of the stimulus which is represented by
taking candy. The other example is you may study harder and harder in the next
term if you get unsatisfied GPA. So, do you see the stimulus and response
there? If you can find it, I’m sure it will be easier for you to follow what I
write here. When stimulus increases the behavior or response it is called
‘reward’, in contrary, when it decreases behavior it is called ‘punishment’.
Related
to behaviorism concept or stimulus and response concept, usually people will
give because they have expectation to get something in return. Something in
returns becomes the stimulus which elicits giving as the response. It will
drive higher intensity (quality or quantity) in giving, so that’s why it
becomes a reward. The more we get something in return as reward, the higher our
intensity of giving will be. So, why do we (still) give if we don’t get
something? Is concept of stimulus and response no longer functional? To answer
this question, we have to know the definition of ‘something’ in that question.
If I assume ‘something’ there as the things
which will we get sooner after we give but in this case (related to the main
question) we don’t get it, so the question becomes ‘why do we (still) give if
we don’t get something sooner after giving?’. So, why does it happen? The fact that we don’t get something sooner
after giving doesn’t decrease probability to get something later (and may be
bigger). So it drives people to give even they don’t get something sooner after
giving. The example of long term things which will be gained are future belief
of being helped later when they’ll be in trouble, or if they do that for the
sake of God, they believe there will be something in return which will be given
by God later. Reward doesn’t only come sooner but it also comes later. And
mostly, the later reward will be more worthy.
There is another definition of ‘something’ on
‘why do we (still) give if we don’t get something?’ question. If something
there means the things we could see, touch, and use or something visible and
priceless, so the reason why we still give even don’t get them in return is
that despite not getting those priceless things, giving still gives us peace,
we feel so happy after giving and the burdens we carry on are faded away. Those
feelings can be the reward, but we may not attain to them, so we feel like we
get nothing in return of giving.
in some parts of life we feel like we only give, give, and give without receiving something in return. We feel like we care and do too much for people we attain at. It perhaps makes us disappointed and unhappy. But do you know a secret about it? Well, actually they’ve already given us the ‘something in return’ things; the invisible happiness which ONLY can be seen if we see it through another perspective. Moreover, everything also happens for reason, like the concept of behaviorism school of thought that there were no responses without stimulus.
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