Be Kipling

At a recent conference, a professor mentioned the values of what makes a surgeon. One of the points he said, is to Be Kipling. He then shared this paragraph; 

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, 

And I swear I fell in love. Well, at least it felt that way for me at the moment. Earlier when the conference commenced, I had a brief mental breakdown, for some reasons I cannot fully disclose here. Sometimes, at some points in your life, there are just some matters that kind of just happened and you cant seem to control it. It just flows. 

A moment you are okay, the next second you are empty. That damn pain you feel in your chest whenever you got upset, the tightness, everything is real and it hurts. It hurts so bad. 

Well, today I look up the rest of the poem- its called If by Rudyard Kipling: 

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!

Well, what do you think of it?

m.