IF by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling_If_(Doubleday_1910)-private

Everyone knows the first two lines of Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem, If, as did I.

But it had been decades, perhaps 45 years since I last read it all in Mr. Watson’s class. An old friend recently suggested that I take a few minutes and consider the poem at this end of my life and after spending a few months jailed in solitary confinement on provably fabricated evidence.

Take a few minutes for yourself. Well worth your time.

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:    Read more