IF

 

Every so often comes a confluence.

 

When it does, I know it's once again time for "If."

I remember getting well acquainted with this poem, thanks to a poster on the bulletin board near the pencil sharpener in Room 4, my English classroom for more than two decades at Sandpoint High School.

At the time, I thought it was a pretty neat poem.

 

As the years and, yes, the decades have passed,  Kipling's thoughts in this classic have gradually rung truer than they ever did back during the youth of my teaching career.

Now, the career is long past, and, from time to time, I still think about "If." 

In the recent past, a confluence of images, of outrage, of words, of human behavior, etc. have made me think of some of the lines within this thought-provoking poem.  

I thought about "If" yesterday while walking the "Meserve Preserve" next door.  

The walk took me to an iced-over pond and along a swale where water flowed through a bed accented by elegant, soon-to-be gone ice formations.

It was a wonderful hour or so----just me and a wide expanse of nature filled with wonderful deafening silence. 

Total peace and a sense of calm as I enjoyed another session of wonderment, viewing and capturing the exquisite workings of nature.

Horses from a field next door watched, but that was all. 

During this outing, I did think of the "noise" aka cacophony of the outside world and how it has reached a crescendo unlike anything many of us have never experienced.

Those fleeting thoughts made me happy---that I do have access to these escapes which always seem to bring my crazy thoughts back into a perspective that can guide me through the next leg of this chaotic chapter of life. 

A gift, indeed.

And, yes, while winding my way along the swale and along a commonly used pasture pathway,  I thought about "If" and about our own personal moral compasses to which we must be strive to remain true. 

The world is a beautiful place, and sometimes not. 

When comes the confluence of the two, Rudyard has a lot to say to us. 

Enjoy. . . . 

If

by Rudyard Kipling

 

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 wornout 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!