If You Can Keep Your Head …

 

I’ve always liked this poem. As I read it today, it strikes me these are great characteristics for the President of the United States!

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;

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

   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 minuteWith 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!”

“Evasion of Truth cripples integrity, and casts thee down from the pinnacle.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 448:10-11

“Christ calls to all with equal tenderness, seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but one answer to them all. Because He hears one Voice, He cannot hear a different answer from the one He gave when God appointed Him His only Son.” 

A Course in Miracles - T-31.II.7:5-6