Guest Blogger- Rudyard Kipling

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run . . . 

                                                          Rudyard Kipling

I definitely don't want to ruin the following poem with too much of my  own connected thoughts. My dad recently sent me an email that referenced this poem, which has been one of my favorites since adolescence.  I even wrote an essay on it in ninth grade (I would LOVE to find it to see how my fourteen-year-old self made sense of it!).  

It has been over a decade since IF  and I have crossed paths.  However, the timing is perfect for me since I have just started my first business venture with Soul Care Place and have enough mistakes behind me to orchestrate nagging doubts and cynical voices telling me I'm making yet another.  All I can say is that at 42, this poem is no longer theory and ideals.  It's a great measuring stick and reminder that it isn't our successes that determine our success.  See for yourself. 

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 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!

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