[twinklesweep]

Originally Posted by senior citizen

Does anyone recall learning this poem in 8th grade???


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!

Rudyard Kipling

I am sorry to say that the first thing that comes to my mind is a comedy routine I heard so long ago that I don't remember the name of the comedian:

"Do you like Kipling?"
"I don't know. I never Kippled!"

Ouch!

I do remember the poem from way back when, more likely high school than eighth grade, and surprisingly my response to it today is not very different from what it was then.

The positive point, to me, is that we must live our lives not based on the manipulations of others but rather to take responsibility for ourselves.

However, there are what strike me as negative qualities in the poem too that I remember noticing back then as well as now. Again this is me, but I see a commendation for the chance to gamble (without regard to how our losses might result in serious problems for others), I see the positive point I wrote above taken to an extreme not quite at but bordering on isolation, I see a degree of chauvinism, and likely there is more.

And I do remember noticing these things back when I was 14 or 15 or 16 and discussing this poem in English class. I think now, as I did then, that Kipling related to a time that was different from the times of my life. And there's no right or wrong; this is just how I saw/see it.

Originally Posted by senior citizen

I wish my dad had taught me the Italian language.
He did once offer to teach me when I was five years old.
But I stamped my feet and stated, "No, I'm an American".
Can you believe that? It would have been much easier at a young age.
That would have been 1950.

Funny, if that is the right word, how different our lives were growing up that for sure in part made us who we are today. My Dad knew seven languages, and even as a young child I wanted to learn at least one of them (other than English) and hopefully more, to be able to talk to the people I met when they visited my parents who knew other languages and not English (rather than my just being able to sing songs in a few languages the meanings that I never understood--and all of which I forgot). But my Dad said, "No, you are an American. Your language is English." I wonder if he would feel the same way today?