By Raul Hernandez
It was at my high school graduation in El Paso where I first heard the poem.
I had plans that night — pile up into cars with fellow graduates and go across the border to downtown Juarez and party. I couldn’t wait until the long graduation ceremony was over and all the boring “go out and conquer the world” and the “world is your oyster” speeches ended.
Then, one more graduation speaker. I rolled my eyes up and checked my watch. Daaaamn.
The speaker whose name I forgot said very little but he read this poem that many years later I framed and put on top of a bookshelf at my house.
It was the most inspirational and beautiful poem I ever heard, and the words still linger in my heart.
I hope you enjoy the Youtube version and the words of the poem, “If” by Rudyard Kipling, which he wrote to his son.
If—
By Rudyard Kipling, 1865 – 1936
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 wornout 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!