If…

I haven’t written much about my brief time in Chicago. I’ve wanted to but have always been too busy, too tired or just too overwhelmed to make sense enough of it all that could be put into words. Being away from home and family is like that. You’re never whole. You’re always alone on a fool’s errand, or so it can seem.

Adventures almost never end as well as we dream, though there is wisdom to be plucked from every day.

So, tomorrow I’m going home to my family and tomorrow can’t come soon enough. Home and my loved ones are just about all I can think about.

But I have also thought about this a lot over the past couple of weeks and it is suddenly desperately important to me that I share it with my sons.

When I was fourteen or fifteen my dad was in Vietnam. He knew I was having trouble coming to grips with his absence, junior high, being a teenager and having the creeping suspicion that boys and girls are different and that it might be important to me someday. I was half-child, half-Martian. Life was confusing and difficult for me and I didn’t even know why.

Dad sent me a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “If…” and these words became the guiding light of my life.

I pass it on here to my sons and theirs. Works for daughters, too.

Read it from time to time, take it to heart and walk tall. It’s a powerful philosophy that can allow you to have your head in the stars with your feet always safely on the ground.

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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Author: Dave Williams

Dave Williams is a radio news/talk personality originally from Sacramento, now living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Carolann. They have two sons and grandsons living in L.A.

3 thoughts on “If…”

  2. I’ve always loved this piece. For years I carried in my wallet a slip of paper on which I’d typed the last four lines, for inspiration. Conveniently ignoring the fact that I am nobody’s “son.” If Kipling had thought about it longer, I’m sure he’d have come up with a good rhyme for “daughter” as well.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.