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Back in the 90s, when I was teaching school, I often encountered the following lines (or edited, unattributed versions of same). Usually they came in memo form, from superiors and their tacksmen, urging that we frontline troops give it our all with no thought of credit or reward. Coming from that source I was sceptical, to put it mildly.
Yet while my Zen practice was still years out, I couldn't help but detect something deeper in this list of exhortations. The writer's clearly expressing a higher cause – the sort of thing that visibly exasperated management in the 80s and 90s.
It was only later, after I'd become a monk, that I encountered the original text and its attribution. The piece, originally called Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership, turns out to be the work of a 19-year-old named Kent M. Keith. His target audience was student government in the turbulent 60s. Thus, viewed in its intended context, it amounts to a rousing manifesto for revolution.
Ho, if those old school administrators had only known! (Better still: if we had.)
On a more contemporary note, it's also a detailed elaboration of a dependent vow in my Rule:
"I will do what I can, even if it's unlikely to succeed."
Viewed from that angle, Kent's meditation addresses harm and resentment carried from past actions and incidents, in almost therapeutic tones that quite move me.
Because it's just as I suspected back then: far from demanding obedience, this text is genuinely subversive. It directs the reader to ignore convention and embrace a more ambitious objective.
One beyond managerial jurisdiction.
So have a look. And if Kent's words spur you to commit insubordinate kindness, well, that's hardly my fault, is it?
I just faxed on the memo.
Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership
by Kent M. Keith
01: People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centred.
Love them anyway.
02: If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
03: If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
04: The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
05: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
06: The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
07: People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
08: What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
09: People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
10: Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
(Ed. note: this last line is fundamentally the dependant vow I quoted above, stated differently. Coïncidence? Maybe.)
(Photo courtesy of Miki Yoshihito and Wikimedia Commons.)
