When I was in my early teens, raising as much hell as I could without getting into SERIOUS trouble, my mom gave me a framed copy of the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling. I guess I really didn’t think much of it, but I hung it on my bedroom wall in the basement anyway. At 17 I ‘ran away’ to the Air Force and left it hanging there on the wall, guarding the rest of my childhood stuff.

Two years later, while home on leave, mom summoned me to my basement hideaway and lifted Rudyard from the wall. “I know this doesn’t mean much to you,” she said. “But I’d like you to take it with you, because in my eyes you’ve really turned out to be a man.”

Those were the most memorable words ever spoken to me. I wanted to apologize for all of the trouble I’d caused growing up, but you know how moms are. The look in her eyes said no apology was necessary.

Thanks mom. I still have that print. It’s followed me throughout my travels.It’s been through several frames – after being broken in several moves or swapped out to match the decor – but it’s always wherever I am.

While placing it in a new frame recently, this memory came flooding back and prompted this blog post.

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

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 these 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!

Thanks again, mom. That’s a tall order, but I’m doing the best I can.

PEACE.
Rick