Poems to the Wise

*wise*

Rudyard Kipling said:

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 by Rudyard Kipling

and I find myself reciting these lines to myself now more than ever. When I first read this poem, IF, I was a teenager and couldn’t really relate. I understood what he was saying, but had yet to experience it in practice. Now that I’m older and have the fortune to deal with many people in many different situations because of the life I chose to lead, I see the wisdom in this poem. I feel good that I have been able to live the virtue of this poem. At the end he says that if I can do all of the Ifs:

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Sometimes its hard when you try to do what you know is right, what feels right to you, and those around you condemn you for it. Sometimes I have to take a step back and not let myself be swayed by someone else’s…insanity. I always say, in the face of undue pressure from the outside: what you eat don’t make me sh*t. That’s the dirty dirty version of it all. So I leave you all with this wonderfully inspirational message: Don’t let what other people ingest be your entrée and give you the runs.