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!
— Rudyard Kipling
Nothing sums up the way I’m feeling this morning better than this amazing poem. It’s probably my all-time favourite poem and I try every day to live my life by it.
Around 8am this morning, I anticipated being in the middle of deepest Wales, holed up in a little hotel not far from the foot of Snowdon, enjoying a celebratory breakfast with the 3 Peaks team and our nearest and dearest who were all coming out to join us.
Instead I woke at home, in my own bed, many hundreds of miles from where I wanted to be and feeling pretty rubbish about it, if I’m honest.
But, straight from my Life According To Kipling playbook, I’m off out for a celebratory breakfast with one of the team and their wife, both great friends who’ve been hugely supportive through the whole crazy rollercoaster of the last few weeks.
I am facing disaster and treating is just the same as I would have the triumph of completing the 3 Peaks. By celebrating I’m telling whatever higher power has deemed it necessary to prevent me completing it for the 2nd year in a row that I will not be bowed, I will not be cowed and I will never stop appreciating, loving and making the most of the gift I’ve been given. Wales or Wellingborough, it makes no difference to me.
If this post means anything to you, please share the sign-up link for the organ donor register for the trek – http://www.bit.ly/oli3peaks – by copying and pasting or sharing the link to this post. Help us make sure everyone who needs it gets the second chance I’ve had.
