Analysis Of Competition And Happiness By Theodore Isaac Rubin

In Theodore Isaac Rubin’s essay, “Competition and Happiness”, he summits about how in today’s society its always the battle eat or be eaten. Therefore our parents always tried to get us involved at an early age to help with our self-development, well being, and health. Since our culture has made us believe that competition brings out the best of us. Yet, it simultaneously brings out a stressful, isolating, and paranoid ambiance at a very young age. I agree with Rubin’s notion since the use of our time and energy is determined by competition and limits our happiness because it weakens our sense of identity.

Particularly, we are more involved with how the next person is doing instead of what we really want to do. Rubin himself classified the

school system “American Competition” that implies how competitive our school system is as a whole. For instance, the first day in my AP English Literature class my senior year our teacher told us to look around the classroom and familiarize ourselves with everyone. It was my senior year, so the people sitting around me were my friends and everyone else was a familiar face, a few making the exception. So we all naturally smiled at each other and were catching up on how our summer was then she told us to stop and look around again and said “everyone in this classroom will be your competition when applying to schools this fall”. All the smiles turned into competitive glances and frowns, and a couple “I bet I’m going to get into more schools than you”. We are trained from an early age to be competitive and always be the best in class. It got to the point that I knew I was competing against my friends and girlfriend. Little secrets like knowing when each school sent out their acceptance letters were something they kept to themselves instead of sharing it. So instead of enjoying “the best year of our lives” (senior year) we acted like competitors or even enemies. That limited our happiness because before we knew it the year came to an end, since all we were worried about was getting the best grades and being involved. Although school should be our main priority, we should learn how to balance every activity to live a happy and healthy life.
We are more concerned with how they feel about us than how we feel about ourselves.

We are always searching for other people’s approval and acceptance. Being the middle child in my family has always felt like a competition for the attention of our parents. I lived fairly close to my elementary school growing up. I remember that every day on the walk there my mom would give me kind of a pep talk, “don’t talk to strangers” “make sure to eat and drinks lots of water” and before I left, she’d give me a blessing (she’s very religious) and the last thing she would say was “you better get straight A’s”. She used it metaphorically; meaning just the best you can be at everything you do and literally as in getting straight A’s. Being in elementary school, I didn’t get letter grades, but instead a numerical system where fours represented A’s. It was a routine that I’m very grateful I grew up with the competitive mentality, but it caused a rivalry against my brother. The moment I’d get home, I would excitedly tell my mom how my reading skills improved or a “cool” drawing I did in class. Later, my brother would come home bragging how he got an A on his history test or how he joined the soccer team. Seeing how he got more attention that day I’d strive to be superior the next day and even more involved growing up. For a second, I became unhappy being involved in so much school, I had to go to school from 8-3, had tutoring since 3-5, and practice till 7. This took a hard impact on my

grades and I was ashamed to tell my mother. I was ashamed because one of my only goals was to make her happy and proud of what I was achieving. As Rubin mentioned, the instinctual pressure was caused by the sibling rivalry from a young age. It affected me because I always wanted to be better than my brother and make my mom proud. Although I still search for her approval, it’s not as strong as before. Now I try to balance so I can be happy, but that doesn’t stop her from reminding me of her speech after every phone call.
Furthermore, competition brings out the worst in people since it’s linked with envy, jealousy, and paranoia.

This is primarily demonstrated in school but it occurs a lot in extracurricular activities too. To illustrate, in school we have a school bank and in our junior year we were instructed to apply and see if we hopefully got the position a student intern. With over 30 applications for an internship for 12 students, our supervisor tells us it was the largest class to ever apply. Keep in mind everyone applying were natural competitors, that were already involved in school such as Band, Sports, Robotic Team and of course to be involved you had to have above a 3.0, so failure was not an option for any of us. They did not care if adding this internship would affect their mental and personal health. All they cared about was keeping the motor running by adding more activates to their already full plate. The first week our senior year we were summonsed: all candidates gathered at the bank to see who got chosen. One of my classmates suggested we’d gather in a circle and open the letters together. I personally wasn’t comfortable and wanted to leave as soon as possible because I knew if I didn’t get it I’d be really upset. When we did open them there were lots of sighs and a couple squeals or those who did get it. As the year continued, unfortunately many friendships were broken, because one of them did acquire the position and it shows how serious students were about this

internship. They cared so much about competing that they couldn’t leave their pride aside and congratulate their fellow classmates; instead hate them to the point you stop communication.
To summarize, competition damages more than students. Therefore we should learn a thing or two about the Swiss schooling system. Most importantly, how benevolent they are compared to in testing sites in America. Instead of giving our classmates more pressure we should be helpful and not avoid them when they have a question about a particular subject.