Life is aservice

Looking at the title, do not jump with haste to the conclusion that this is an article of self less sacrifice. I am trying to establish a perfect selfish motive for life. I believe, the concept I am trying to pen down is still a bit nebulous. In fact, my attempt of writing itself is to structure it for developing a better clarity.

My first statement is “life management is a service management, and if an individual has been successful, irrespective of the field, he has managed his life with clarity of service management.” These statements may appear to be outrageous and you may sneer at it. If that is so, I want to add another statement “There is no such thing as self less sacrifice, it is only with a selfish motive a sacrifice is.” If I am not wrong, even the behavior of a fanatic ready to sacrifice his life for a cause he believes in, could be explained as an act of service with certain expectation.

Before looking at further postulations, let uslook at the basic definition of a service. It is defined as “an act essentially intangible in nature, performed by an individual or group to other individuals”. The person providing a service does have an expectation, to receive something,either from the service receiver or from the organization which employed the service provider. From marketing perspective, other characteristics also emerge about a service; however, we will look at them later. The intangibility has been taken as the primary differentiator between a “Product” and a “Service” from marketing perspective to elaborate on how to market a service.

Let us go beyond the realm of marketing. Since,definitions developed for the purpose of marketing will have an obvious narrow focus. Marketing concept is still under evolution. We are now trying to define that highest level of marketing as a “Relationship or Service Marketing”.

As a pedagogue, I observed that establishing and convincing students that “Ultimately, what a marketer does is marketing ofa service, even when he is in a product marketing business,” was not an easy phenomenon. Majority of the times students were struggling a lot to comprehend it.

Let us look at the first statement” life management is a service management”. What exactly we are trying to establish here is the fact that service is entwined with life it self. From the moment of birth, to the last activity of absence of life that is till death, service is inseparable from life. In fact, birth of a person can be explained to be due to an act of service between a male and female. A person is born primarily to give and take service. The service he/she provides immediately after birth could be explained simply as provision of entertainment and satisfaction to parents. He/she in turn receives food and nutrition as a service exchange from parents. Parents provide all types of comforts to their children during their period of growth and development and one of the expectations is a delayed repayment of taking care of them in their old age. All acts of humans during their life time could be treated as service exchanges. Education is a service, where in, with a little fee and physical presence a child seeks knowledge and the teacher provides it as a service in exchange for his sustenance. Working in an organization is a service of spending stipulated time and contributing to the firm’s growth through the application of acquired skills and receive the salary and recognition as an exchange. Marriage is a service exchange between husband and wife. They contribute to each others needs and comforts.

Learned scholars tried to study incisively and analyze human needs and developed even a hierarchy of needs. Essentially, the various levels of needs explained by them can also be treated as needs of service at various times during the life span of individuals.

Assuming that part of the first statement has been elaborated convincingly let us look at the other part “if an individual has been successful, irrespective of the field, he has managed his life with clarity of service management.” Take examples of any successful individual andthe profession. We need not limit our view to only select individuals. Any person, any profession will do for us. The only yard stick we use is the person being successful. Successful people of all walks of life will receive name,fame and money. Success means the individual has provided a needed service to the society, which in turn has bestowed all what he aspired for. The successful person could be a marketer, politician, expert in fine arts or any contributor to satisfy societal needs. Common to all is the parameter of society’s acceptance and recognition of his/her contribution. There could be many less successful people in the same profession, which is an indicator of society not accepting the individual’s service.

Let us now look at the third statement which says that there is no selfless sacrifice. Be it a yogi aiming at nirvana, or a fanatic ready to sacrifice life for a cause, common to all of them is the preparedness to sacrifice the core essence of their existence i.e. life itself. If that is so, why are they ready to sacrifice the life? They believe that the cause they are sacrificing for is superior to life it self (True Beleiver by Eric Hoffer). From their perspective their life is worthless and by sacrificing it they are exchanging it for a worthy cause, Hence, we can now say sacrificing life is a service, with some expectation.

Now the critical question is how to lead a successful life or how to be a successful service person. In other words, how to lead a life where you receive the services you want from others and others would be more than willing to provide the services you ask for. Similarly, how to be received as a successful service provider by others.

To be continued….

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