"If"-by Rudyard Kipling

The year was 1991...I was in 4th grade, Mr. Miller's class. It was springtime, and I know that because I remember that not too long before I had won the spelling bee and went to compete at county level. That happened in January or February-I remember wearing a sweater to that county competition and being dog-sick and trying to remember abstract words I saw in dictionaries bigger than I was. So based on those memories, this next memory came not too long afterward.

Annually Village Elementary School held a poetry recital. Depending on the grade level, participants were to memorize a poem and recite it as eloquently as possible for a school-age child. You'd think I would have been tired of the stage after the spelling bee ordeal (I was so sick I couldn't think at the County Bee and I ended up coming in 62nd place, which isn't bad out of 130 people, but still...), but I knew I was a good reader and I thought I could win. Weeks before the recital Mr. Miller handed every student in our 4th/5th grade combination class a xeroxed sheet with a poem printed on it, and I immediately began to try to read and comprehend what I was supposed to stand up in front of the school and say. The poem was called "If" and was written by author Rudyard Kipling (the same guy who wrote "The Jungle Book.") It read as follows:

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 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!


I spent days reading and re-reading the lines... and though I had a stellar memory, for some reason I couldn't seem to retain anything past introducing the poem. "'If', by Rudyard Kipling." I'd say over and over again until my mom threatened to kick me out of my house. I just couldn't retain the verses long enough to recite them and up until now I never understood how I could read something every day several times a day and not be able to repeat it, but now I get it. I could speak the words of the poem just fine, but I had no clue what it all meant, and I was never satisfied with just knowing anything-I had to understand. Something about the first two lines intrigued me. I was 9 years old going on 10-but somehow I knew that there would be a time in my life where those words would be very useful. I wanted to understand, and I'd read it, and ask grown-ups to explain it to me, but I got nothing. I wore myself out so badly on trying to get it that I basically threw in the towel on the competition-when it came time for Mr. Miller to listen to each of us and choose a participant, I could only get as far as the first four lines. But I was doing something most other 9 1/2 -year-olds would rarely do-I was really trying to grasp what was being said and see where I fit into it. Somehow I knew I'd love this poem as an adult. And I do. Basically it is about attitude-how we view ourselves, how we view obstacles, how we view others, how we relate to them...and the person we become as a result of our inner vision. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I still do, after all these years.