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If — 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 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!.

My buddy Ray Thaw sent me a copy of “If,” by Rud­yard Kipling. His ques­tion: “How’s that for balance?”

I hadn’t read this poem in decades, and I was glad to re-acquaint myself with it. It cer­tainly fits with our present theme. I want to go back to my orig­i­nal anal­ogy of the enlight­ened life being like the flow of a river between the banks of two extremes. They are chaos and rigid­ity. We could call them any­thing. In the poem, we see the Mid­dle Way expressed, in how the per­son lives in the face of challenge.

Exam­ple: “If you can meet with Tri­umph and Dis­as­ter
And treat those two impos­tors just the same;”

Our ten­dency is to think, as we work our way along, that wis­dom leads to no problems.

This in fact is the key “sell­ing point” for New Age ideas like “The Secret,” and other books and movies that preach “what you think you cre­ate.” The idea is that the cos­mos is a sys­tem that is like a gum ball machine. Put in the right coinage (pos­i­tive, directed thoughts) and out pops what you paid for.

Except the real world isn’t like that.

The plot of the poem more clearly cap­tures real­ity. This is obvi­ously the descrip­tion of some­one fairly far down the path, and what we see are exam­ples (dis­as­ter, loss, dis­re­spect, etc.) of “the shit hit­ting the fan.”

Also, there are exam­ples of “adoration.”

And the wise soul nav­i­gates between these two banks by sim­ply being with what­ever hap­pens. There is no expec­ta­tion that “stuff” will not hap­pen. There is increased skill in deal­ing with it when it does.

I once worked with a client who came in with the self-identified need “to get her affir­ma­tions fixed.” No, really. Those were her words. Her life was not going “right,” and she knew that if only she worded her requests to the cos­mos cor­rectly, every­thing would be perfect.

Her hus­band was hav­ing a stu­dio built for her, and she had the hots for the car­pen­ter. She and he had pro­gressed to touch­ing, and to pro­fes­sions of admi­ra­tion, and had even decided that they were “soul mates.” (Hint: no such thing, so stop look­ing!)

He and she talked daily (while he “ham­mered”…) about the spir­i­tual neces­sity of them “join­ing their ener­gies together for the ben­e­fit of all.” No, really.

I laughed, and said, “So, bonk him. What’s the prob­lem? And kill the flow­ery language.”

She: “You don’t under­stand. This is a deeply spir­i­tual mat­ter. He is mar­ried and so am I. I am try­ing to word my affir­ma­tion so that our spouses will real­ize, with­out out telling them, that our join­ing together will ben­e­fit every­one. I want every­one to approve, and be happy for us! Is that too much to ask?”

Me: “Um… hmm… Well, the odds of your part­ners get­ting on the band­wagon isn’t high, unless you’ve talked about this and come to an agree­ment about hav­ing sex with oth­ers. The odds are they won’t like it, or might even decide to leave. That would be a consequence.”

She: “If I get my affir­ma­tions right, there will be no consequences!!”

This went on for a few ses­sions, until she real­ized that I wasn’t going to be able to “fix her hus­band by remote con­trol affir­ma­tion.” She left to look for some­one more competent.

Now, I have no prob­lem with her want­ing to bonk the carpenter.

She may even decide to actu­ally do it, as opposed to fan­ta­size about it. The prob­lem is in her assump­tion that “enlight­ened peo­ple” (and she assured me that she was one...) don’t have such dif­fi­cul­ties. They are so wise and won­der­ful that all there is are roses and adoration.

The poem above puts pause to that notion.

Wis­dom is this: life con­tin­ues to hap­pen, no mat­ter what we do, what we learn, or who we are. At the very least, we are march­ing along to the final des­ti­na­tion for us all — death. Every sin­gle one of us is going to get older, to get sick, infirm, and die. All the wis­dom in the world can’t stop this.

And then, life has a habit of being real, and part of real­ity is that things will hap­pen that we’d rather didn’t. This is inevitable. The wise per­son has no illu­sions about this. What they do have are the ways and means to deal with the drama. And that way is to deal with what is, as opposed to whin­ing about what isn’t.

To quote : If nei­ther foes nor lov­ing friends can hurt you,
If all count with you, but none too much;

This, again, is the key to bal­ance.

We end­lessly say that what hap­pens inside of you is “all you, all the time.” Oth­ers don’t hurt you or make you happy. (The only way another can hurt you is if they do it physically.)

Words do not hurt - your inter­pre­ta­tion of the words is what causes you pain.

What is really being said here is that we need to be aware of oth­ers, and sen­si­tive to oth­ers (the Bud­dha would use the word “com­pas­sion­ate.”) This does not, emphat­i­cally, mean doing what oth­ers want you to. It doesn’t mean end­lessly putting oth­ers first. it means being aware of oth­ers, and not being a jerk. It means being hon­est and open, and reveal­ing of who you are and what’s up for you.

Oth­ers count, just not too much. The Mid­dle Way.

In the end, it’s impos­si­ble to be much use if you are con­stantly look­ing to oth­ers for praise, for admi­ra­tion, or for direc­tion. That’s your job. It’s your job to be per­sis­tent in your talk­ing, learn­ing, and shar­ing, while remem­ber­ing that oth­ers are “right there.” The more we work at this, the more oth­ers might choose to offend them­selves. Our job is to know, expect, and except this—to be com­pas­sion­ate, and to keep walking.

Our work with this blog is to offer you an alter­na­tive view, and to help you to drop mag­i­cal think­ing, while encour­ag­ing you to keep going. Part of the walk is sim­ple accep­tance of “what is.”

Next week, we’ll look at this from a Taoist perspective.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
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Related posts:

1. Ponzi Schemes and Mag­i­cal Thinking
2. Mag­i­cal Blues
3. Putting Your Soul into your Being
4. Form is empti­ness, empti­ness is form
5. Caught Tail

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Tagged with: enlightenment • mindfulness • Self-responsibility

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