This is post #8 of the 100 days to offload challenge.
I read this poem when I was in class 9th or 10th. I remember it well because of my English teacher at that time. He used to make us read it and then explain each stanza.
I was just scrolling through some reels, and I came across this poem again after a very long time. I'd forgotten the poem itself, but I remembered the title "If by Rudyard Kipling" and it suddenly brought back all those memories of school.
I started reading it again. As a teenager, it sounded like every other generic piece of advice. But now, when I'm re-reading it, it feels different.
This particular line grabbed my attention:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
It reminds me of a similar concept explained in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna tells Arjuna to let go of attachments to results and focus only on his actions.
This entire poem is full of gems. It tells you what kind of mindset to have. But I think how one actually reaches there is a journey of its own, and it's a lifelong process.
This is a poem I would like to keep coming back to and re-read.
PS: I don't read poems.
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!