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!"
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I have read this poem many times. I even had a version of it on the bathroom
wall of my old apartment. However, it
takes new meaning when discussed in a therapy session with patients in the
psychiatric wing of a hospital.
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"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..."
She suffers from paranoid delusions- believing that many
people are after her and trying to kill her.
The medical staffs’ calm demeanor is frustrating to her. She cannot understand why we are merely
adjusting her medications and not bringing in the FBI. She peers across the table at me with
skepticism, her eyes a startling blue under her matted blonde bangs.
"Wow! That color blue really suits you!”
I want to say. But
she might take it the wrong way. No one
wants to be told that the blue paper scrubs suit them. Besides, this is supposed to be a therapy
session.
---------------
He is nervous, very nervous, and that is why he is
here. They tell him that he will have to
have a surgery for an incidental finding discovered on a randomly ordered
test. Because the surgery will involve running
a catheter into the blood vessels of his brain, he is worried about the
surgery’s side effects.
“What if I end up, you
know… more mentally handicapped then I am?”
To that, Kipling says,
"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!'"
---------------
One patient voiced her sorrow that many people dismiss her
as worthless as soon as they find out that she has a mental illness. They don’t think that she can dream. They don’t even think that she can think.
Another patient comforts her:
“You have enough to
worry about without people hanging around who treat you like that. Good riddance. We only need the people who will help us get
better.”
"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 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."
She sat next to me silently throughout most of the therapy
session. The therapist only seemed to
call on her when she didn’t have a well formulated answer. However, there was one important question
that she did answer on the worksheet:
“When was there a time
that you started over?”
Her quiet, yet determined answer?
“Right now”
Head out the door, on time, wearing neatly
pressed dress clothes, white coat with at least 3 pens in the pocket, and name
badge. 