Finding Integrity and Grown-up Behavior In an Old Poem
Years ago my mother had me memorize certain poems with the hope they would inspire integrity and grown-up behavior. Memorizing poetry was a common tool in child rearing during my mother’s generation, slowly lost in mine, and pretty much nonexistent in most parents’ toolboxes today. However, I did pass my mother’s wisdom on to my children by requiring the same memory work from them that I had endured.A memorized poem turns into a valuable asset when the Spirit Holy wants to bring a line or two to your attention in situations needing grown-up behavior. If, by Rudyard Kipling, is one such poem.
"If" by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about youAre 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 DisasterAnd treat those two imposters just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spokenTwisted 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 winningsAnd risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept 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 minuteWith 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!
What memorized poem influences your life?
In Him together, Susan Gaddis