IF

Last Summer when I was preparing to begin the Homeschooling Journey, I came across Rudyard Kipling's "If". It's also in Charlotte Mason's Companion. I decided right then and there my children would learn this amazing piece of work and someday be able to recite it word for word. Of course that may not be accomplished until their teenage years but it's a beautiful poem I plan on having posted in our school room for years to come. A few days ago I came across a featured section on Chrissie Wellington, (British Triathlete) in Runner's World Magazine where she mentions Kipling's "If" as her prerace inspiration. I decided to go back and read it again and I got even more out of it than the first few times I read it. At times when I am alone in my thoughts, usually while running, I sometimes wonder if I am the only one who feels the way I do when facing struggles. This poem reminds me that we all experience the same anger, the same pain, the same emotions and the same triumph. But the place where we are different is not everyone can hold their virtue while facing the storms of life. My prayer is that I will always hold my virtue no matter what is said about me. No matter what others may think, no matter how many times I mess up, I will hold my VIRTUE. Few people do.

IF

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 all 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