Kipling's invitation

I spent some time with my new business advisor, Aramis my cat, reflecting about the intense moments of the past decade of my life and about things that I find moving in the world. About sad and violent leadership, success and failure, the death penalty in our world's most advanced nation, useless wars, priceless sparks of peace, advances, major and minor catastrophes... Life, the Universe and Everything. There is a poem of R. Kipling that should be read by leaders, managers, politicians, researchers, artists, employees, freelance experts, social workers, doctors... everyone because it is a tremendous resource for a more peaceful and harmonious world (within first and outside next, not the other way round as some of our leaders do):

If

 

If you can keep your head when all about you

 Are loosing
theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

 But make
allowance for their doubting you,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

 Or being lied about,
don't give way to hating,

Or being hated, don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream - and not make dreams you master;

 If you can think
- and not make drams your master;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

 And treat those
two imposters 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 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 loose, 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 you 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 will be a Man, my son!

 

R. Kipling