IF

Dear Why Team member,


I hope this week’s message finds you well and encouraged.
A few weeks back, I shared with you a poem written by one of my favorite modern poets, David Whyte, and I received numerous positive comments.  This week, I am sharing my favorite empowering poem. I have written on this poem in the past and this week felt particularly inspired to share it again.

There has never been a time in my life, yes, in both positive and what I perceived to be less-positive moments, where at least a part of this poem was not able to provide helpful perspective. It spoke to both my joy and my sorrow.


This poem is framed and hangs above the water fountain in the gym where I train twice a week. My mental training follows my physical training as my discipline includes the reading of this poem before I leave the gym. So, I have read these words about twice a week for over ten years - and they have always served me in some way by doing so. Only the final words involve gender and can be easily changed.


This week and for your weeks ahead, 
I hope this poem will serve you as well.


IF -
Rudyard Kipling,  1865 - 1936

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 wornout 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!


Make it a great week!
​

Steve Luckenbach