Speak Beautiful Words Anyway

Anyway
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people might cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone may destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you have got anyway.

Dr. Kent M. Keith from The Paradoxical Commandments

Say What?

Aren't those Mother Teresa's words?  Isn't the real name of that poem The Final Analysis? Aren't you purposefully omitting the line: You see, in the final analysis, it is all between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway? Are you taking her beautiful words away, retitling the poem she wrote, and giving credit to someone else?  How could you?  She was a Saint?

Where the Words Really Came from

Mother Teresa was a Saint, as far as I am concerned.  She was the epitome of what we should all strive for as human beings. She was not, however, a great writer. 

She certainly lived by those beautiful words above but she  did not write them.  She actually took them  from a Harvard sophomore by the name of Kent Keith who wrote them as part of a leadership guide he created  for student council.   She loved them so much she plastered the above words on the wall of her Calcutta mission in poem like verse.  She...oops...forgot to credit the author when she did so.  So when author, Lucinda Vardey, visited the mission in order to write Mother Teresa's biography she noticed the poem  on the wall and spoke about it in her book, Mother Teresa: A Simple Path. Reverend Schuller also saw this poem when he later visited the mission and accredited the words to Mother Teresa, sharing them as hers in his book, Turning Hurts into Halos. They were not, however, her words.(http://www.kentmkeith.com/mother_teresa.html)

Does it matter?

I mean when we believe they came from someone we revere as a saint  we put a more Divine quality into them don't we?  We speak them with more reverence and meaning. When we discover that they were part of a leadership guide for the Harvard student council...well maybe they don't punch us in the heart strings quite as much? 

Speak the Words with Reverence Anyway

Still the words themselves are beautiful regardless of who wrote them or for what reason.  They are still divinely inspired, would you not say?  And the impact they have had on the world demonstrates that. Lines have been stripped from the original, lines have been added; titles have even changed over the years  but the idea of forgiving, being kind, succeeding in spite of challenges, building and creating for the sake of building and creating, being honest, happy and doing good no matter what...well isn't that Life's universal lesson?  Isn't that what Mother Teresa and so many other great humans exemplified?  Isn't that what makes the world a better place?

It really isn't about authorship, exacting detail, about receiving or giving credit...it is about giving and living and Being the best we can be.  So though Keith did not receive the credit ego tells us is required in this busy world...look at the impact he made by writing those words...anyway.

All is well.

References/Suggested Readings

Keith, Kent. Dr (2018) The Mother Teresa Connection in Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World. Retrieved from http://www.kentmkeith.com/mother_teresa.html