Winning Life's Prize: Wisdom

I came across Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If," yesterday -- and found resonant wisdom in these lines.  Are you strong enough, when being lied about, not to deal in lies -- or when being hated, not to give way to hating?  Can you "bear to hear the truth you've spoken/ Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools?"

Great words -- and they all have to do with the fundamentals of character.  We all make errors at times, but do we know how to rectify them -- how to pick ourselves up and go forward having made an honest self-reckoning?  Or do we double-down in order to deny our responsibility for our own actions?  The answers determine the true progress of our lives -- nothing less.

                                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 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!