Grateful for an adventure season. Brought this poem by Rudyard Kipling to mind. Apologees to him for the changes I've made:
IF
—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 [others] 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 [work] you’ve [given]
[Dismissed] by knaves [who come across as] 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 your next season]
[And play each game of guard and shoot]
And lose, and start again [against all reason]
And never breathe a word [of sore dispute]
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: ‘[Play] 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 [folk] count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving [contest]
With [forty minutes’] worth of [game and fight,]
[You will hear from Husky Nation, “All the Best!”]
And—what is more—you’ll be [UConn, ever Bright!]
