Many, many years ago--when I was a young person--I was going through a very difficult period in several ways. I was struggling in many ways: personally; professionally; financially; and physically. I felt that there was no one that I could turn to for help or advice.
I went into a bookstore seeking information on some of the subjects that had seemed to converge and had me in what I perceived, at the time, to be a completely untenable position. I had already chosen several books--and was looking for more--when I noticed a small poster. I read it, and reread it several times.
I put all of the books back on the shelves and bought the poster.
Over the decades and in the course of the tens of times that I have packed up and moved, that small poster has been lost, but it has never been forgotten. I offer the poem here now, on the off chance that some other young person may serendipitously happen upon it, and it may serve them as well as it has served me over the years:
"If"
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!