How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress (Niels Bohr).
Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray).
As in the originally Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, the Paradoxical Commandments below should not be necessary, nor needed in a stable, secure society, if that society/culture has any form of decency and self-respect toward its own members but humanity’s frailties of greed, insecurity, self-interest have always dominated.
Anyway: 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 (Dr. Kent M. Keith).
Gluttony, self-indulgence, by the few, as seen in my prior post, (The Village of 100), is slowly destroying everyone. Everything, for today, the future, obliterating so much including the great deeds, accomplishments, sacrifices of those who thought beyond the self. There are the poor without the ability to change their own world. Yet, there are still those who can make the larger, the smaller individual decisions. They are us who have the power to transform everything, every one by simply believing in the power and influence of the self. We are the one’s whom Paradoxical Commandments apply. We have that ability.
Personally, at times, I have difficulty in seeing the purpose in doing good, in trying to be myself in a world, a society that can be destroyed in an instant, devastated in just a few years, or forgotten as in the empires and cultures of the world’s past.
The forgotten people, families, communities struggled with the same worries and concerns, of health, food, economic survival, the security of the family unit. They, their homes, villages, cities have returned to the soil from hence all arisen, only for the eyes of the archeologists to piece together. Strangers handling the bones of souls with names long forgotten. Who sees, benefits today from the efforts of helping, doing good, after 10, 20 years, centuries? Does anything really matter?
On the contrary.
Maybe, trying to change the world is not the point. Maybe, the physical world is not the point after all. Life is. We will be gone, along with our achievements, hopes, fears, loves, our names, in just a few generations, if we are that lucky. Proving we are greater than our physical presence, is the desire to do something that we know will not make a difference in the greater scheme of this world. This desire to do something, big or small, with little consequence in the sometimes unmovable path of history, displays an unseen, ingrained gift, proving we have a universal connection to each other, to the neighbor, the stranger, to and toward the Center – God.
Helping one person might not change the world, but it could change the world for one person (Anonymous).
Every soul is the point. All Souls. The world is just a small piece of reality, a reality we must preserve at any cost, but not at the cost of a soul.
Therefore
The Great Perverse
Only
Until I do
My Soul’s Truth
Something Happens.
Something inside changes,
Then the World changes, suddenly.
The World in me, in the other, in the unseen.
Inglorious, delicious. In spite – of our human frailties and evils.
Evil, Pain, Hate
Conquered
By
Finding
The Hidden Self
Soul’s Profound Truth
Doing, Giving, Imagining
The Real World Shifts, Forward
By Not Trying to Change the World.
I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples( Saint Teresa of Calcutta).
Because of these desires to do good when the effects of doing good may be awkward, difficult, troublesome, even painful and forgotten, unseen, impractical, only enhances the belief of existence greater than the individual, greater than the physical, for something unseen and invisible is touched. We can call it the Soul. The Soul of the person, the Soul of the Greater unseen. The Soul of the great Communion of all Faiths leading to love – to God.
To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How’s that for a paradox? (Tom Robbins).
The Saints of our faith, every faith, past, present, to come – know this. They lived by this paradox, going against the grain of human nature’s unholy self-interest. Through their own fallibilities, brokenness, they discovered something greater and in return were scorn, mocked, suffered, degraded, tortured, and faced death. Yet persisted.
The Paradoxical Commandments relates not just to our own times, but reflect the history of humanity.
By these commandments:
- We must be aware of but not controlled by the impermanence of our time and things.
- We must be aware of the eternity of time in which we exist and the eternity of the invisible realm residing outside our realm of visible existence.
- We must care not if we fail, only if we do not try. Care only if we are not truly honest. Care only if we truly try, letting our actions be for the soul’s reasons.
- We must hopefully find our meaning, through the encumbrances and the harsh difficulties of life and being your true self. Your soul’s purpose. How few have that opportunity.
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day (Hamlet, Act-1, Scene-III, 78–82).
We must not be affected nor limited by our impermanence nor the shortness of our physical sojourn nor by the importance of being everlasting – our name and deeds carved in stone and, carried forward through history’s eternity.
Everyone matters. The smaller their footprint, the greater the importance. Remember, Jesus directs his apostles to the old woman giving her two copper coins at the temple’s offering. (Mark 12:41–44. Luke 21). If only I. Courage, love, faith.
Humanity’s ego, of the individual, of culture/society, maybe the most self-destructive possession unto themselves and others. Do not let the result of having your good deeds, actions condemned, deflected from your true purpose of doing what is good.
Be the change that you wish to see in the world (Mahatma Gandhi).
The difficulty is, our talents and gifts are deeply hidden not presenting themselves as readily as wished.
Let each reach their own heights, by their individual gifts. We have talents to discover, skills to share, not to bury. Do not equate to another’s. Do not judge.
Let the gifts of our knowing our souls to be presented to all. Let the genius of our imaginations soar. We can soar. We are eternal. We are all children of the same, one God.
We are human.
This article first appeared in The Catholic Stand.
Glenn Slaby Blog