I originally intended on this lazy Sunday morning to write a post about keeping a cool head (after the stock market volatility this week) and how it is often wise to avoid the herd mentality which drives fickle and foolish decisions. As part of that I intended to quote a line from Rudyard Kipling, but you know what, the magnificent Mr Kipling (not the cake one!) said all that needed to be said on the matter in my opinion.
Written 115 years ago, as perhaps paternal advice for his son, Kipling’s wise words still stand true today…
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!
Rudyard Kipling, 1910
Many thanks for your wise words Mr Kipling. And if the other Mr Kipling is reading, thanks for the cakes too! 😁
I guess a modern day equivalent (although it is almost thirty years old now) is the essay by Mary Schmich ‘Wear Sunscreen’ that inspired Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)’, also known as ’The Sunscreen Song‘.
It is well worth listening too…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeDDs61AlBo