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I wanted to share some more of my favorite things. This time I wanted to share my favorite all time poem with you. This poem is in a special class of my favorite and most inspirational poems. My second favorite is “Desiderata’ by Max Ehrmann. I’ll tell you why next time.

I learned the poem IF when I was in seventh grade. I loved it the first time I read it, and the poem became a compass for me in my youth and throughout my young adult years. There have been nights as an adult I have recited this poem to myself though tears and found encouragement to keep going.

The poem “If” written in 1895, is by the British poet Rudyard Kipling. It is a poem that is nearly 129 years old and represents a set of commandments in which he addresses his son to live optimally. It is advice for everyone on how to live and spread tolerance and forgiveness so that we improve ourselves. The poem shares how to deal with the hardships we go through, and it can teach us to never give up in difficult circumstances, but to always rise again.

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 them 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!