photo credit: net_efekt from flickr

Sometimes I wonder if services are a zero sum game, in a way.  Basically, it seems that whenever you’re really good at doing something for others, you don’t really know anyone who can provide that very something to you as well.  Take that person in a social circle who’s always the entertainer – the one who tells jokes that make people laugh, the one who tells stories that captivate people, the one who plays pranks that amuse people.  I know a few people like that and it seems they never get to sit back and let someone else take the reins.  Certainly everyone can be better off because they all enjoyed it, including the person performing, but I’m sure there are the times when they wish that someone else could take their place, if only for a moment.  It is then that other people win, but that person loses and it becomes a sort of zero sum game.

I was listening to yet another talk, where it was mentioned that a lot of people don’t want to know how a magician does his tricks.  It was then that it hit me that the mystery others feel when they watch magic they don’t understand is lost upon the magician.  A magician cannot mystify himself with the same sort of wonder that this audience experiences, for he understands the mechanisms behind the tricks.  Certainly it’s cool that he can do a certain thing a certain way and make people believe he did something else, but it’s not as cool as just believing he did that magical thing.  So in providing a certain type of service to others, you rob yourself of the experience of being on the other side.  I guess it’s only worth it if the pleasure of providing the service outweighs the loss of the experience.