If
This is one of those poems that a lot of us had to learn when I was a schoolboy. It was only years later that I realized that it is really very profound, and why Kipling had quite a reputation for his philosophy.
“IF”
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
but make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t dive way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same,
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fool,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools,
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss,
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after the are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.”
–Rudyard Kipling (Indian-born English Writer and, in 1907, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1865-1936)
Dr. Richard G. Petty, MD is a world-renowned authority on the brain, and his revolutionary work on human energy systems has been acclaimed around the globe.
He is also an accredited specialist in internal and metabolic medicine, endocrinology, psychiatry, acupuncture and homeopathy. He has been an innovator and leader of the human potential movement for over thirty years and is also an active researcher, teacher, writer, professional speaker and broadcaster. He is the author of five books, including the groundbreaking and best selling CD series Healing, Meaning and Purpose. He has taught in over 45 countries and 48 states in the last ten years, but spends as much time as possible on his horse farm in Georgia.
