My mom dropped me off at my middle school a few minutes before it opened. As I was getting out of the car, I realized something. “Mom, I forgot my saxophone at home and we have rehearsal today,” I told her.

My mom sighed loudly, “I’ll get it, but next time, remember to bring it, ok? You should be more responsible.”

“You don’t have to if you need to get to work. It doesn’t matter that much anyways, it’s just a rehersal.”

“No, it’s fine. I’ll get it.”

I yelled, “Thank you!” as my mom drove away.

I picked my saxophone up in front of the gate 20 minutes later and had a fine rehearsal. Only afterwards did my mom tell me that she missed the train to get to her workplace by a couple of seconds.

I learned a couple of lessons that day. I learned that as I grew older, I needed to be more responsible like she said. I appreciated my mom’s actions, and I felt sad that not that many people are that selfless like my mom. We live in a community that doesn’t really reward selflessness. I think the mentality most people have is: it doesn’t help me, why should I do it? I think that more people should be selfless, and help each other.

Selflessness isn’t really rewarded in schools, so it is shown to kids from a young age that selflessness isn’t useful. For example, once I didn’t help one of my classmates pick up his things that he dropped. Instead, I went to class and got there on time, while my classmate got there late. I was being selfish by not helping my friend, but got rewarded for it by not being late. So instead of rewarding selflessness like they should, most schools will reward selfishness. Another example is that I didn’t to help my friend with his homework, and he got punished for not doing his homework and I got rewarded. This is how it goes in a lot of schools, and even if you are selfless, you still wouldn’t be rewarded. The message schools send is: By being selfish, you stay out of trouble and do better in school. This message turns school into a competition, where you try to do better than your friends instead of helping them.

People benefit in society from being selfish, not selfless. Take companies, they say they are trying their best to provide great customer service, but most just focus on making as much money as possible. CEO of Wells Fargo John Stumpf scammed Wells Fargo customers by having his employees create millions of bank accounts which customers were unaware of. After his scam had been exposed, he fired 5,300 branch managers and regional managers, while taking none of the blame or paying back any money himself. By being selfish, he made over 200 million dollars and didn’t have any consequences. Instead, he fired lower level employees and remained CEO of Wells Fargo. There are many instances like these in society, where people benefit from being selfish. Comedian George Carlin said that the owners of corporations not only own everything, but they also, “Spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everyone else.” He argues that by being selfish, you get to the top. Many rich businessmen are selfish and only want stuff for themselves, not anyone else. By being selfish, they stay at the top, make a ton of money, and become the most powerful people in the country. They benefit from being selfish, not selfless.

In our community and society, selfishness benefits the individual more than selflessness, but that isn’t how it should be. My mom made a small sacrifice that day, and if more people were willing to do selfless things like that, our society would be a lot better. There would be less greed, less stealing, less competition where people want other people to fail, and instead a healthy kind where people push themselves to succeed. I think if schools stopped showing kids that selfishness benefits them, then when they grow up they will be less likely to be selfish. Instead of taking, they will give back.