Every year the start of summer is marked for me by the annual Wimbledon Tennis Championships at the All England Club. I rarely pick up a tennis racket myself, but I look forward to watching the drama unfold as two tenacious athletes duel on the grass. The last thing competitors see before stepping onto tennis' most prestigious stage is an excerpt from the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same.
The triumph and disaster of Wimbledon's Centre Court for 2011 have long since faded, but the words that hang over the player's entrance to Wimbledon's Centre Court remain with me. I find myself repeating them between patient encounters, e-mails, and meetings, as I prepare myself to deal with whatever triumph or disaster or mundane detail comes next. Kipling's poem is filled with maxims for living well. I encourage you to take a minute to read the entire poem and invigorate your own integrity, resolve, and passion within these eloquent lines.
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!
Kristine A. Himmerick, MPAS, PA-C, is on the faculty of the FNP/PA A program at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, Sacramento. She is a member of the JAAPA editorial board.