This will sound so odd, but I took a picture of a poem at a Jimmy John’s in Texas. We were there for a tournament and took a short break to grab some food in between games. Just above our table was this poem, If by Rudyard Kipling. I read it in full, and it captivated me.
What struck me wasn’t how lofty it sounded, or even how old it was. It was how practical it felt. This wasn’t a poem about being extraordinary. It was a poem about being steady.
To me, If is really about learning how to exist in the world without letting the world harden you or inflate you. It’s about balance, confidence without arrogance, resilience without bitterness, ambition without losing yourself. It doesn’t promise success. It promises character.
The older I get, the more I realize that life isn’t decided by the big moments we imagine, but by how we handle the small, relentless ones. Being misunderstood. Losing when you gave everything. Being doubted, being tired, being disappointed. Being tempted to quit, lash out, or prove something to someone who doesn’t actually matter.
That’s what this poem is teaching. Not how to win, but how to be.
As I stood there reading it, I kept thinking about my boys, all three of them, each at a different stage, each learning in their own way how to move through the world. One on the edge of adulthood, two still watching and absorbing more than they let on.
This poem feels like a roadmap I wish I could hand them without lecturing. Not instructions for success, but reminders for living well. To stay steady when emotions run high. To hold confidence without arrogance. To lose without becoming bitter. To keep going when things don’t work out the way you planned, and to do it quietly, with dignity.
Because the world will test them. It will doubt them, praise them, disappoint them, and sometimes be unfair. And I don’t need them to be perfect. I just hope they learn how to stay themselves through all of it.
If they can do that, if they can keep their heads, their hearts, and their integrity intact, then they’ll be more than successful. They’ll be grounded. And that feels like the real goal.
If by Rudyard Kipling
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!