# If - Rudyard Kipling From [[Rudyard Kipling]] "If—" was written around 1895 and first published in 1910, in *Rewards and Fairies*. Kipling wrote it as paternal advice to his son John, framed as a long conditional sentence: a list of virtues that, held together, make a complete person. It is in the public domain. ## The poem > 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! ## Why it matters - **Equanimity over outcome.** "Triumph and Disaster ... those two impostors" is the stoic core: both are external verdicts, neither defines you. - **Persistence without complaint.** Losing everything and starting again "and never breathe a word about your loss" — the work restarts, the ego stays quiet. - **Will as the last resort.** When heart, nerve and sinew are gone, what remains is the decision to hold on. Grit described before the word existed. - **Proportion in relationships.** "If all men count with you, but none too much" — care about people without outsourcing your judgment to them. - **Time as the unit of account.** The unforgiving minute is the only resource that cannot be recovered. ## References - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if--- - https://youtu.be/sqOgyNfHl1U?is=6mQrBg2OG-SV6OSn ## Related - [[Rudyard Kipling]]