When I'm Feeling Adrift

Our perception of reality affects us more than Reality itself. Sometimes, the solution is not to fix the world, but to spend time reframing our perception of it.

Today, I was feeling a little unbalanced, so I sat down and wrote out one of my favorite poems from memory* (longhand - with a pen!).

It helped me, and I hope it’ll help someone else, too. Maybe even you!

If you can keep you 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 game 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;
And 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 a Man, my son!

”If” by Rudyard Kipling

*Because I’m writing from memory, some of the punctuation, capitalization, or line spacing is inexact. Sorry!