Thank you for the Kipling quote. I very much enjoyed that. I have Kipling's poem "If" in a little booklet that I keep by my computer. A friend gave it to me over 40 years ago. I am afraid I was too young to enjoy it at the time. I didn't care for poetry. But I kept the present all the same. I'm not even sure why. And it turns out that time has taught me a thing or two about the power of words. Some things can only be said well in a poem. I would like to quote the poem here:
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!
Serendipity! May I refer you to a post I wrote just yesterday.
What I've posted here is actually a slight adaptation of some lines of one of Kipling's poems - the reason I apologised although as I said, I'm sure he'd understand why I appropriated them. It's a poem that doesn't get quoted much any more, because of its racial overtones, but it rings true very much today. He wrote in 1899 directed at the United States - he foresaw that the United States was going to be put into the situation that the British Empire had found itself in - a nation that found itself having to save and protect others, but earning their contempt by doing so.