The Paradoxical Commandments

As universal, personal, and who-knows-what-kind-of forces knock us around this month, I was struck by something called, "The Paradoxical Commandments" in a new way today. I've always loved them. These are usually credited to Mother Theresa, but were apparently written by Kent M. Keith when he was but 19 years old, and a student at Harvard. He wrote them as part of a handbook for student leaders called, "The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council" in 1968.

Powerful words can travel around the world, and so did these. in 1997, Mr. Keith attended a rotary meeting where his own words were read back to him as a poem attributed to Mother Theresa.

The Paradoxical Commandments:

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 need 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.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

I looked up the story of how his words made it to Calcutta. Here is what he said in his own words:

"I went up after the meeting and asked him where he got the poem. He said it was in a book about Mother Teresa, but he couldn't remember the title. So the next night I went to a bookstore and started looking through the shelf of books about the life and works of Mother Teresa. I found it, on the last page before the appendices in Mother Teresa: A Simple Path. The Paradoxical Commandments had been reformatted to look like a poem, and they had been retitled "Anyway." There was no author listed, but at the bottom of the page, it said: "From a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children's home in Calcutta."

Mother Teresa thought that the Paradoxical Commandments were important enough to put up on the wall of her children's home. That really hit me. I wanted to laugh, and cry, and shout-and I was getting chills up and down my spine. Perhaps it hit me hard because I had a lot of respect for Mother Teresa, and perhaps because I knew something about children's homes. Whatever the reason, it had a huge impact on me. That was when I decided to speak and write about the Paradoxical Commandments again, thirty years after I first wrote them."

~Kent M. Keith from http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/mother-teresa-connection.html

Today, I felt moved to post them to my virtual wall, here on Blue Pearl, and share them with you, humbled by their impact on me. how much more we need these words in our world today, and right now. I've been thinking about how I can live up to them, even in the face of personal struggles. How about you?