Renown poet, writer and novelist, Rudyard Kipling along with our favorite, Unknown Sage have pertinent advice for us during these trying times.
In 1910, Kipling wrote about staying calm and rational when everyone else is panicking in his poem If:
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!
What do you think? Are there “men” among us today? Are our companies (and our country) in crisis mode? Is this the new-normal? Well, don’t panic. Our favorite, Unknown sage adds:
If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you’ll be a head taller than everyone else.
Let’s all stand tall!
For me, I’m trying to follow the saying from an old painter I used to work with when I was in my twenties. His favorite lunch was a pint of Malort. After lunch, we doubted Carl could paint a straight line (let alone walk a straight line). Never the less, he had trust enough in himself to finish out his shift. And if he spilled a little paint, he’d just say, “Oh Malort” and then sing a little from the Newfoundland and Labrador folk song:
Don’t panic. Jack was every inch a sailor.
I don’t know if Carl was once a sailor, but I noticed that he never panicked. He simply kept his head and finished the job. He reminded me to keep my head in the face of adversity, too.
I wonder - where’s your head, and your heart, these days?
GAP
When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.
