This poem was found in the program for Lost Mountain Middle School's Honors Celebration.
Anyway
By Unknown
People are unreasonable, illogical, 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 person with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds;
Think big anyway!
People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs.
Fight for underdogs anyway!
What you spend years building up may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help, but will attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway!
Give the world the best you have
and it may kick you in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway!
A woman seated in the center section of the school's auditorium on the left side was seen reading numerous lines of the poem aloud, laughing loudly, and giving her many opinions on the poem and who may or may not have put it in the program. Her daughter, who was seated beside her, has no comment. Her husband, seated beside his daughter, says that perhaps his daughter can use the situation in an essay someday. Let us now turn over the poem to our own lit critic, Darby Franks. Darby?
"This poem makes me want to crawl under a rock and shun daylight. I say 'poem' to be kind; this is no poem. What this pile of dung really exists as is a long series of commands to do illogical things with no reason offered as to why you should do all of these things anyway. The lack of syllabic structure and figurative language confirms it. And then there're the minor grammatical errors making my skin crawl: the comma in the middle of the fourth 'couplet,' the semicolon being horribly abused in the sixth, and the fractured final lines that switch the word 'have' for 'got.' But what really kills me is the fact that this trash was printed in a middle-school awards ceremony program. Many of the students there to collect their little standing trophies and certificates are already incredibly insecure and unsure of themselves. And now you tell them that what they 'spend years building up may be destroyed overnight?!' Some sadistic administrator must take some real pride in how frightened their little pupils are of failure, and slipped this little beauty into the program just to remind them of their own fragility."
Thank you for your input, Miss Franks. That is all for tonight's news report. Thank you, and goodnight.
Anyway
By Unknown
People are unreasonable, illogical, 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 person with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds;
Think big anyway!
People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs.
Fight for underdogs anyway!
What you spend years building up may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help, but will attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway!
Give the world the best you have
and it may kick you in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got anyway!
A woman seated in the center section of the school's auditorium on the left side was seen reading numerous lines of the poem aloud, laughing loudly, and giving her many opinions on the poem and who may or may not have put it in the program. Her daughter, who was seated beside her, has no comment. Her husband, seated beside his daughter, says that perhaps his daughter can use the situation in an essay someday. Let us now turn over the poem to our own lit critic, Darby Franks. Darby?
"This poem makes me want to crawl under a rock and shun daylight. I say 'poem' to be kind; this is no poem. What this pile of dung really exists as is a long series of commands to do illogical things with no reason offered as to why you should do all of these things anyway. The lack of syllabic structure and figurative language confirms it. And then there're the minor grammatical errors making my skin crawl: the comma in the middle of the fourth 'couplet,' the semicolon being horribly abused in the sixth, and the fractured final lines that switch the word 'have' for 'got.' But what really kills me is the fact that this trash was printed in a middle-school awards ceremony program. Many of the students there to collect their little standing trophies and certificates are already incredibly insecure and unsure of themselves. And now you tell them that what they 'spend years building up may be destroyed overnight?!' Some sadistic administrator must take some real pride in how frightened their little pupils are of failure, and slipped this little beauty into the program just to remind them of their own fragility."
Thank you for your input, Miss Franks. That is all for tonight's news report. Thank you, and goodnight.
