Category: Poetry and Other Writing

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 imposters 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 breath 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!

Rud­yard Kipling

My mom gave me a framed ver­sion of this poem on my 16th birth­day. I was­n’t a man then, so I did­n’t real­ly under­stand it. Lat­er, when I thought I under­stood it, I dis­agreed with it on all points. It sat in the clos­et in my old room until I turned 30, at which time my mom gave it to me again. I flipped it over and on the back was the note she’d writ­ten my for my 16th birth­day, the note she’d writ­ten for my 30th, and the hand­writ­ten poem my Grand­ma wrote for me on my 16th. Read­ing “If” at 30 is yet again a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. Now I feel like I under­stand it; now I strive for these list­ed virtues.

Now it hangs in my son’s room, and I hope as he grows that he will feel the same ways I’ve felt about it over the years.