MM#115--Rudyard Kipling's poem "If"

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. Just some seven months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, which ended the bloodiest war in the United States history. Some 8200 miles away in Bombay, India, one of the United Kingdom's most recognized poets was born. Richard Kipling was born in British India on December 30 1865. His most notable works are The Jungle Book 19 680 94 Kim in 1901, and just so stories in 1902. His most notable poems are Mandalay in 1890, Gunga Din in 1890. And if, in 1910, this last poem, if it's perhaps the most recognized in the United States, as it appears in most school textbooks, and it's relatively short, inspired and written as a tribute for a Scottish colonel, leader star John Jameson, whose character was inspiring was very inspiring to many of his contemporaries in England, but who while serving in South Africa botched a military raid. Ultimately, the poem titled if would become parental advice for his son, John, born roughly about the same time as the writing of the poem. 

So in today's Mojo minute, let us read or let us rather hear the reading of Rouge yard Kipling's poem, if, which is how to live a life of virtue. 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 to, if you can wait and not be tired of waiting, or be 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 your 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 knives to make a trap for fools. Or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and the rest get on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings, and never breed. Never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they have gone and so 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 Keens, walk with kings, nor lose the common touch if he if neither foes nor friends can hurt you. If all men count with you, but not too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 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

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