If You Can Keep Your Head When All About You Are Losing Theirs

Chances are, you haven't grasped the gravity of the situation.

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 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 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!

I've always loved that poem. My way of dealing with (any situation whatsoever - nothing is too trivial) is to go to the most catastrophic outcome possible, which gets me a lot of grief about being "negative" but whatever. At least when The Worst Thing happens, I'm prepared. And I get to say "I told you so." And if it doesn't? When then, we're all ahead, right?

I'm on a poetry kick. Did I mention I'm loving wandering the 'net and finding all sort of little gems? Did everyone read The Fall of Raven at chitta'svrtti's?



A view of the hills before they become completely overrun by houses and buildings. Close though, eh? Notice the sunny blue skies? 9am this morning.





Hezekiah again, spurning her lovely throne like lawn chair festooned w/pillows and towels for a bunch of plastic bags this morning. Notice her disgruntled look? I woke her up.













I dug out a UFO that I had forgotten all about:
It will definitely need to be blocked. Notice the lovely sock part of it is stuffed in? Ingenious. It kept getting in my way.


I almost forgot! Tonight is the terrible choice between House and Scrubs at 9pm. Hate network executives.