Treat those two impostors just the same..
And treat those two impostors just the same;"
Yes, that would be the holy grail of life. The final reversal of the master-slave relationship where you control your emotions and not the other way round. I stumbled upon the poem again while reading an Inormation Week article (http://www.informationweek.com/816/16uwbe.htm), and felt it would be relevant to in this blog.
For the interested, here's the entire poem by Kipling.
(www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html)
[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
posted by Dream Runner | 1:46 PM
3 Comments:
"If" was one of the many forms of torture that the nuns at my Catholic elementary school used to make my life difficult. In the sixth grade, we had to recite the poem by heart, if we were accused of being bad, before we could go to recess. Fortunately, my many occasions of bad behavior caused me to have to learn the poem by heart. Now, as an adult, I fully appreciate "If". I too find the line regarding "those two impostors" one of my favorite lines. In fact, I have to remind myself of this fact on at least a weekly basis.
"If" was one of the many forms of torture that the nuns at my Catholic elementary school used to make my life difficult. In the sixth grade, we had to recite the poem by heart, if we were accused of being bad, before we could go to recess. Fortunately, my many occasions of bad behavior caused me to have to learn the poem by heart. Now, as an adult, I fully appreciate "If". I too find the line regarding "those two impostors" one of my favorite lines. In fact, I have to remind myself of this fact on at least a weekly basis. Now whenever I think of Sister Dorthy Marie… I simply think – “Thank-You”.
For me If sums up an ideal in a simple and inspirational way. I can quote random parts of it when appropriate but have never learned it by heart. It comes up in all sorts of situations and is on the wall of my classroom in Spain in both English and a Spanish translation which I try to get my students to read to see if the translation "works". In an episode of Morse, Lewis who clearly does'nt know the true origins of the phrase "If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same" corrects Morse when he says ah yes Kipling, by saying "no sir center court Wimbledon" to which Morse replies "yes of course Lewis" and accepts for once Lewis's view of the world which is sometimes no bad thing.
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