Rudyard Kipling's 'If-' The Perfect Poem to Kickstart this Year. (+poem explained by poem!)

Before Earth completes one rotation around the Sun, earthlings begin making promises to themselves about how they themselves will make a turn for the good - yes, with new year resolutions.

The new start of our calendar year gives us a sense of renewing our daily life and hence we take a moment to sit back, reflect, and do better the upcoming time. So resolutions are a direct consequence of areas we think we need improvement and must progress more.

"Whatever we are now is the result of our acts and thoughts in the past; and whatever we shall be in the future will be the result of what we think and do now."

Whatever you dream and think of, you create.

Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be; if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be."

                     -Swami Vivekananda

Hence I thought to make a blog on a great common resolution we can all derive from the poem we're going to look today. It is one of my all time favourite poems and is a great work of none other than legendary literary figure Rudyard Kipling, the one who also wrote 'The Jungle Book' as well as many underrated works.

His poem 'If-' though, deeply impressed me. Let's see how profound necklace of words it is!

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!

Here it ends. I kept it uninterrupted by my commentory because it may break your flow, hence let's try to comprehend this poem.

Well, no sentences can define-out or encapsulate the sublime beauty of this poem but still, we can say it minutely describes how a person should be. With stirring examples, it tells us how a perfect human is in absolute harmony with everything.

Actually, I would like to present to you all my own poem which I had made around a year ago, which delivers the exact same message as the poem 'If-'

I think a poem only can best explain another poem with exact same message!

So here's my composition which I've named 'The Soul in Sync with the Dance of Divine'

He whose service is selfless,

With his every action

As an offering to the infinite,

He whose love is impersonal

With his vision expounding

The message of universal oneness,

All blessings pour on thee,

The Soul in Sync with The Dance of Divine.

All blessings shower on thee,

To thee may come all right!

He who is a blazing ball of energy,

With his jaw strong and face upright,

Whose will cannot be shaken even by the thunderbolts of heaven,

All blessings pour on thee,

The Soul in Sync with The Dance of Divine,

All blessings shower on thee,

To thee may come all right!

He who is the Master of Self,

With his Soul made up of rare alloy

Of Knowledge and Compassion.

Indeed a scarce combo of head and heart!

He who personifies a snowy dove,

With his pair of wings

Depicting his stable qualities

Of Wisdom and Humility.

All blessings pour on thee,

The Soul in Sync with The Dance of Divine,

All blessings shower on thee,

To thee may come all right!

     - Daksh Parekh (not patented, don't copy, lol)

To compare the message of both poems and derive meaning? That's your task. It is the most useless job to explain poems, as its beauty is in diversed interpretations of every reader!

May we all have a blessed year,

Thanks,

Daksh Parekh.