Cooperation. A dictionary will define it as, “Working together for mutual benefits. A thesaurus will substitute it with unity, teamwork, and mutualism. Cooperation is a glue that holds together positive traits such as responsibility, perseverance, and bravery. Without it, there’s hardly any need for these traits because they’ll be weakened by lack of cooperation.

In reasoning, cooperation guaranteed a speedier performance. For example, let say you have a two hour work to do in a day. By yourself, it’ll be overwhelming and take away precious time. You don’t want that. But with a friend or two working together, you can cut the work in half or more. That’s why NASCAR required each drivers to have a team of pit stop workers to refuel the car, pump tires, and fixing it faster.

Still not convinced? Well then, ever heard of a term, “Two brains are better than one”? Well, cooperation put that proverb into a meaning. For example, let say there could be a group project but two kids decided to work separately. Kid #1 is talented at visuals but not so well on writing, and Kid #2 has skills in writing but lack the talent in visual. If they work separately, they may not get the score they want. But if they work together, there’s a good chance of getting at least an A. As you can see cooperation combines the strengths of the group and turned it into something better.

Are you still not convinced? Well, this might will. Cooperation also means a more unified group. Not only it can combine strengths and faster speed, it also means that you can get to know more about your peers and work together for the common good. If people did things separately, then they’ll be more isolated and not know much about others and work for their own interest. But working together, they’ll get to know each other more, achieve the common goal, and hopefully, be friends. That’s how the Constitution worked. It united America into a stronger country because it got the States to be more friendly, work together to be the world superpower, and a stronger national government. It did all those things unlike the Articles of Confederation, which turned the states into competing tiny nations.

Of course, as effective as my reason may be, there are always a couple of hotheads that tried to argue against it. Ex: What if people took advantage of group work and not do so much but get the same credit. Is that fair? Well, then it’s not cooperation. And besides, there’s always someone that have an extra job that make sure everyone’s working, like a work police.

Our 44th President of America always quoted, “Yes we can,” the word “we” have a certain meaning to it, cooperation. Cooperation made Obama’s speech possible with speedier performance, combined strengths, and more unity for the common goals.