Since reading Worth the Candle I’ve started thinking about my interactions with people in terms of loyalty points on occasion, which … I don’t think is endorsed by the text per se but is kind of cool.
My normal model of social interaction is something like: sometimes I have a spontaneous, genuine desire to be nice to people. I invite them to hang out because I enjoy spending time with them, or I ask them something because I’m really interested to hear what they have to say.
Sometimes I don’t feel this spontaneous desire: maybe someone said something that bothered me and now I’m feeling annoyed at them, or maybe I’m just tired or busy and don’t want to devote a bunch of time and energy to social interaction right now. In these cases, I feel like I should be nice anyway, because if I don’t I’ll be a bad person and feel guilty, and then I feel resentful toward them for forcing this obligation on me.
But if I instead think about this as an opportunity to score some loyalty points, it’s no longer an obligation; it’s more like a fun video game that will pay out in actually valuable real life rewards. I don’t have to be nice to anyone; it’s my choice. But if I am nice, then they’ll probably like me more, and say good things about me to other people, and be there for me when I need help in the future, and if we get to level 20 we can use 50% of each other’s skill levels which is pretty useful.