Being of service in relationships

One of the things I talk about the most with my friends is relationships. Romantic, friendly, deep or shallow doesn’t really matter. It’s always a topic for conversation, and an area of life where I think most of us have experienced problems in.

An underrated take on relationships that Chris Rock voiced in his special “Tamborine” is that anyone in a relationship is in the service business. That is, we need to realise that in order for relationships to work, we need to be of service. Or as Rock puts it:

— Sometimes we’re the lead singer, and sometimes we play the goddamn tambourine. And if you’re on tambourine duty, play that motherfucker like you mean it.

Everyone who’s ever been a part of something bigger than themselves knows that there’s nothing better to have communal success. They also know that it sometimes sucks being in the background playing tambourine.

That’s when it’s important to remember you’re in the service business. And we’re not in the service business for credit. Nor for praise. We’re in it because it makes the holistic picture a lot better. And because we know that most of the time it feels really good to be of service.

And to give you some tankespjärn, we have to reverse engineer it as well. In order for someone else to be able to be in the service business, we need to let them know what we need. We need to make it easy, or at least as easy as we can, to serve.