This is What Resilience Looks Like

 "If"

by Rudyard Kipling 

If you can keep your head when all about you

Men 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 things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop to 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 nerve and heart 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!

This poem brings back so many memories from my high school days.

It was one that a close friend recited often in the years of our friendship before he left for Vietnam.

He was the one person who at least strived to live out these words of Kipling.

He was a wonderful example to me of the word Resilience.

For background information on the history behind this work of Kipling's,

click HERE