A direction, not a checklist

Hello you

There’s a poem you already half-know. It hangs framed in hallways, gets read at school, turns up on office walls and one of my friends even has it tattooed on his shoulder: Kipling’s “If”. Thirty-two lines of if-you-can-do-this. I’ve been coming back to it for years.

And for years I read it the way most people do, as an example to live by. Read that way it’s crushing. Nobody keeps their head every time while all about them are losing theirs. Nobody treats every impostor the same or fills every unforgiving minute. Hold it up as a pass/fail standard and the poem is just a list of the ways you fell short this week.

But look at the lines themselves:

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same...

He never says you will. The whole poem hangs on if. And an if is not a verdict. It’s a direction: a handful of things to keep turning back to, on the days you get them wrong as much as the days you get them right. Read that way, the same thirty-two lines stop being a stone tablet and become a compass.

He’s not right about everything, mind. The part that’s aged worst is the stiff upper lip: lose everything, start again at your beginnings, and “never breathe a word about your loss”. There’s a real direction under that line. Don’t nurse the grievance out loud; don’t make your setback everyone else’s weather. Keep that. But “never breathe a word” overshoots, and taken as a rule it curdles into bottling everything up.

So here’s the same line, updated for the compass:

If you can lose, start again at the beginning and not whinge about your loss; while being open about it to the people who love you.

Courage includes facing what you feel, not burying it. The openness is the braver half, because bottling up is the counterfeit of strength. Holding on is a virtue; asking for help is not the opposite of it. Take the 1910 armour off and the direction underneath still holds. It’s just given space.

This is the first of five issues I’m calling The Field Guides: five texts people keep coming back to, read as directions rather than standards.

One thing to try this week. Read the poem. It’s two minutes and it’s everywhere. Pick the one line that stings most; the sting is usually accurate. Then treat that line as this week’s direction, not this week’s verdict. One thing to keep turning back to.

That’s the whole re-read. Aim at the man, not the medals.

Your turn.

Which line of it would you keep as a direction?

And if that turns over something heavier than a line will hold, it needs someone better qualified than me. That’s not me ducking it. Samaritans are on 116 123, free, any hour. You don’t have to tell them your name.