One of my closest friends is battling stage four Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Her older sister is my childhood / high school best friend. I'm helping wherever I can with raising money for the bills, putting together a silent auction and benefit, and rallying the resources of our hometown around her while she kicks cancer's ass. Her struggle is my struggle. That's how I have always felt about the people with whom I am close. In the age of social networking, it's easier than ever to spread the awareness for her fund. The flip side of this coin is that free will allows anyone to think anything they would like about why I would do such a thing.
I'm as close with my cousin Ariana as I am because we have both been plagued by what we call, "the curse of the moral compass," our whole lives. My brother and I talk about it often too and we joke that it runs in the family. In short, the moral compass is a curse because in using it to guide your life and actions, it results in judgment / alienation / anger by or from any number of people around you when you do any combination of the following:
a) Choose to take the noble, high road.
b) Do something important for your own life that benefits only yourself.
c) Protect someone else that can't protect him/herself.
d) Do any solo mission out of the good of your heart. (The cheese stands alone.)
e) Anything else that can be classified as a reckless act of kindness.
f) Refuse to participate in mean-spirited gossip.
We kid that it's a curse because it's not an active choice. I am compelled to do/be good because that's how I wake up every day.
There will always be people that decide it's for other reasons.
If you do good, strangers will decide that you were only doing good to get credit for it or for show.
If you do good, people that have never done good will decide that there must be something terrible inside your past for which you have to compensate. Why? That's the only reason they would do good, and they don't understand any other reasoning for it.
If you do good, you will lose former loved ones that decided that your doing good was somehow a coldhearted, personal blow to them by the rule of exclusion.
I'm not a saint. I'm learning to be more confident but I have never thought highly of myself. I'm just a woman who is willing to do anything for the people she loves. If it means that people in my life continue to come and go frequently because they are convinced it means something different, it's their own loss.
...It's not between me and them 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 may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could 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've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
- Mother Teresa
