One of the comments of a friend this week hit home. She said that we have a right to choose our behaviors, but not the outcomes. That truth has been a long time in gestation for me. When my focus is deflected to the reaction of other people, it is less able to attend to my actions. Which is the one place I
have power.
The poem If by Kipling expresses it.
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 give 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 with 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 fools,
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 they 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 with 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,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
I first came face to face with this poem when I saw it engraved in stone at a cemetery in Los Angeles. I was eleven, and stood gazing up at the wall long enough to begin committing it to memory.
Something in it resonated deeply within me, and over the years the couplets have come back like guard rails for my spiritual climb. I paired it with music, and often sang it when life bubbled up over the edges.
I was even so bold as to tweek the last line. I don't think Kipling would mind.
And - which is more - you'll be an angel, my friend.
