Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments
Anyway: The Paradoxical Commandments
by Kent M Keith, Ed.D.
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas
can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really want help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.(C) Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968. Renewed 2001. Used by permission.
After reading the above quote in a magazine, I was curious about it's origin and did some research. The author has established a website: http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/
Originally written in 1968 by Kent M Keith when he was 19 and a sophomore at Harvard College as part of a book for student leaders, it has been sited all over the world and been quoted by many famous people. Because it hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home, Shishy Bhavan, in Calcutta, the poem is often incorrectly attributed to Mother Teresa.
Recently a version has been circulating on the web, entitled The Final Analysis, because of the last two lines that have been added to the original writing:
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
Keith had the following comments to make on his website about these additional lines:
The last two lines in this "final analysis" version trouble me, because they can be read in a way that is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus, the life of Mother Teresa, and the message of the Paradoxical Commandments themselves. The statement that "it was never between you and them anyway" seems to justify giving up on, or ignoring, or discounting other people.
That is what Jesus told us we should not do. Jesus said that there are two great commandments - to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. So in the final analysis, it is between you and God, but is is also between you and "them." And when it comes to them, Jesus made it clear that we have to love people and help people anyway. We can't give up on them or ignore them or write them off.
This thought goes along with a book I finished reading last month, The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor. The author, Mark Labberton, contends, "If we say we love God and don't love our neighbor, it turns out we don't love God. In other words, our faith is only fiction."The Insensitive. The Unreasonable. The Self-centered.A Life of Love.A Life of Faith.God. It's inseparable. Anyway. Not an easy model to live by.