If..., by Rudyard Kipling

This poem has some great comments about staying calm and mentally tough through all the challenges of life and work, and deriving one's satisfaction and self-esteem from within rather than from external circumstances.  The first and last verses are famous... which is why I looked it up. 

What struck me when I read it again is the entire sixth stanza, beginning with "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/ to serve their turn long after they are gone" and the first two verses of the last, together comprise the most accurate and poetic description I have read of how I (and I am sure, others) feel in the final six miles of a marathon or half-ironman.  Here's the entire poem, enjoy:


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!

The discipling of training for and completing endurance races over long distances is an exercise in mental toughness that cannot help but make one better able to face up to all the other challenges of life as well.