‘Do good anyway’

July 20, 2023, Los Angeles

She’s been reading, again, Marysia Konwicka’s Byli sobie raz, which in English means They were once.

We’ve been watching, repeatedly, Brooklyn.

Yesterday we saw a film she very badly wanted to introduce me to, Bombshell, the documentary about Hedy Lamarr. The day before it was Anywhere But Here, the movie where Susan Sarandon’s single-mom character leaves her small town for LA with stars in her eyes, and then gets work as a public school teacher.

There’s a theme here. Each of these women, the heroines of these stories, left home. They went off in search of a home somewhere else. They dreamed. They longed. Through successes and failures, they fought.

Each of these women, like Mom, they searched for Place, for Self. It’s no wonder Mom keeps going back to these stories. These stories are her.

In the film about Hedy Lamarr there’s a moment at the end when she’s on the telephone, and we hear her voice read from the following poem, called The Paradoxal Commandments by Kent M. Keith, which she liked to recite to her children.

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.