Tag: Serenity

“If-” A Stoic Poetry by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling is famously known for the creation of ‘The Jungle Book’. He is the youngest British Nobel Laureate (at the age of 41) till date.

Rudyard Kipling

Today we will be deep diving into Rudyard Kipling’s all time famous and many people’s favorite poem ‘If-‘. This poem written in 1895 was published in his famous historical fantasy book called ‘Rewards and Fairies’ in 1910.

This poem is all about a set of recommendations from poet to the reader (or his son) to become a person of greater values, virtues in order to handle every situation in life irrespective of its outcomes. The only motivation to act on something must be our intent of welfare of ourselves and the society around us as a human being and only thing we can control is our perception of things is the core idea of this poem.

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:

 This is about believing in ourselves and freeing ourselves from self-doubt. It is also about remaining content when everyone is against you. It focused on not losing sanity when everything around you seems to have lost the meaning, when everyone behaves like they have lost their minds, when chaos has surrounded you. This is the time which will demand you to remain confident of your intentions. 

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;

This is more about remaining calm, balanced and unaffected. There might be several times where the results won’t be immediate, one should deal it with patience. It is about the moving away from instant gratification and not doing things for immediate pleasures. Especially, in the times of Social-media instant gratification has become a very innate thing in the human behavior.

When you will be lied to or when you will be hated, a person’s behavior must not favor the idea of ‘tit for tat’ or ‘an eye for an eye’ indicating reactive behavior, retaliating behavior. Rather not dealing in lies, abiding to the truth even when lied to and not hating even when hated are the virtues poet wishes to have in the reader. The balanced behavior of humility in smart person and simplicity in good looking person will make him a desirable person. Otherwise, who values a smart but arrogant person anyways!

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:

This is about the what you do with your life and how you do it. It is about finding the purpose of your being in the life and envisioning yourself to fulfill that purpose. You should not be consumed by the dreams solely- thereby causing in-actions; the poet expects the reader to have actions for achieving these dreams and visions. Winning and losing are called imposters here because of the nature of our perception about them; one is desirable and the another one is not. The mere possibility of loss leads to inaction causes us to go deeper into the negative feeling of not achieving anything. The poet wants reader to not care about the consequences which are not in the hands of doer rather do the immediate things to get the consequences (whatever they may) which are always in the hands of doer.

The best way to come out of indecision is to act on things which are in our immediate control.

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;

This is about remaining committed and honest to your words, keeping your promises. This will demand a person to face the truth, make others aware of the truth when they are being fooled by some dishonest people and this requires courage. It is about remaining committed to the purpose even when things will fall down and you will feel that the virtues you are living with have worn-out and are of no value as they didn’t yield immediate favorable effects. This is some sort of test that you should go through to reach your ultimate pure desires.

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!’

Here, our poet wants the reader to have a really great goal in life whose purpose must be to leave an example or a legacy for others to follow as a light house. The greatness of this purpose will make him to sacrifice any great achievement, great possession for the greatness of purpose is the only thing that will not perish. All the great possessions or the biggest of big losses are valueless in front of a great purpose or a great legacy.  These can be the sacrifices in the great journey.

The loss of hard earned possessions, achievements may force a person to lose his interest in the journey; but the person’s resilience and the will to hold on to the greater purpose will define what is inside him, what he is made of !  

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:

The poet talks here about doing what you are saying, being aware of the reality and being humble and dependable yet remain unaffected by too much expectations of people around you- friends or enemies. It is about not getting flattered by the good opinions from the people loving you and not getting despised of the bad opinions of your haters or enemies. It is about being free from the opinions, projections of the people around you.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Unforgiving nature of time indicates interaction of time with we as a humans. Time waits for no one. It is the most neutral entity in our life which is not affected by anything rather everything is under the influences of the time. The poet wants reader to fill a minute with sixty second means being aware of every moment we are going through and doing justice with it, investing it in doing good things.

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Yep, after all of these conditions, all these ifs- one can achieve and enjoy everything that makes his/her life complete.

Stoicism in ‘If-‘

The poem is considered as one of the best depictions of the principles of Stoicism, the ‘Stoic’ philosophy. According to stoicism, a stoic person is one who remains unaffected by the things happening around him/her (It also does not mean that remaining dumb or numb) The Wikipedia definition is “someone who is indifferent to pain, pleasure, grief, or joy”.

Stoicism is based on the idea that all of the things happening around us are made up of cause and effect. Sometimes, we know the cause behind anything but it is practically impossible to know cause behind everything and after knowing that cause – change its effect to our desired results. There will always be something which will not be in our control. This idea of having rational structure of universe made up of cause and effect is called as ‘Logos’ in Stoicism.

The stoicism tries to establish that we cannot always know or remain aware of the logic behind everything happening with us and around us. ‘We’ – a person not being aware of ‘the cause’ of happening this ‘thing’ will not prevent the ‘thing’ from happening. It means that some things will always remain out of our control and our expectations. Hence the best you can do is to establish the control on things which are in immediate influence of you.

Hence,

Rather than expecting the world to be ‘ideal’ to anyone’s expectations – the stoic accepts the world ‘as it is’. In order to grow through this world, a stoic controls that thing which is in his/her immediate control. The poem ‘If-‘ by Rudyard Kipling does the excellent job of describing the virtues if a Stoic and what can be done and controlled to achieve greatness.

There are two pillars of Stoicism: Four cardinal Virtues and the dichotomy of control.

Pillar I- Four cardinal Virtues

Wisdom– the idea good and bad

Temperance– no overdoing and under doing things, doing the optimum, doing what is necessary

Justice– the awareness of what is right for given situation of a person or a society

Courage– the knowledge of justice and to standing for it

Pillar II-The dichotomy of control

This is the most important and the most famous idea in the stoicism. The dichotomy simply separates the things which are in our control and things which are not in our control.

The best way to deal with the things which are not in our control is to accept them as they are and the best thing to deal with the things that are in our control is to act on them immediately so as to eventually shape the reality we expect.

The best thing about the stoicism is that it was developed by people representing different levels of society. “Zeno of Cyprus” known as a father of Stoicism was a wealthy merchant in Athens who turned to the development of stoicism when he had lost all his possession in a shipwreck. With nothing in hand, he turned to a book shop and got influenced by the ideas of Socrates. Epictetus, the person who was a slave also contributed to the stoicism in a great way. Actually, the meaning of Greek word Epictetus (ἐπίκτητος) is “gained” or “acquired”. The real name of this slave is not known to anyone and there are no known writings by Epictetus available. All his knowledge was transcribed by his pupil Arrian and published as “Disclosures” and “Enchiridion“

"Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, 
but by the opinions about the things." 
- Epictetus, Enchiridion

The same idea Rudyard expresses in the poem when he asks reader to remain sane and confident when peoples are doubting him/her.

Marcus Aurelius who was a Roman Emperor and one of the greatest philosophers was also a stoic. Marcus Aurelius and emperor was influenced by the ideas of Epictetus- a slave. He wrote all his ideas in his famous book called Meditations. Nelson Mandela’s colleagues smuggled this book while he was in jail. This same book influenced Mandela to move away from the idea of revenge and think for the betterment of the society while he was in jail.

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” 
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Rudyard indicates the same philosophy about just getting consumed by the thoughts of the consequences and not acting on achieving something. Fear of failures is the real death, understanding that there is no such thing as success or failure will immediately lead to action which is in person’s hand.

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” 
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Rudyard Kipling discusses the same idea of remaining honest to your words, keeping you r promises for it is the only way to differentiate the right and wrong. If you understand that you were right- you will embrace it and if you understand and accept that you were wrong you will learn from it because seeking truth has never truly harmed anyone.  

Seneca, one of the famous and important contributors to stoicism was dramatist and satirist.

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” 
-Seneca

Kipling has also recommended to come out of indecision by doing the things in our immediate control.

In a whole way, when one understands the real meaning behind the poem, the expectations of poet and the philosophy of Stoicism, this gives a great moments of understanding rather enlightenment about the way of life.

‘If-‘ by Rudyard Kipling possibly one of the most important poem in the history of humanity. 

Zeno, Epictetus, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius - The four important Stoics

Image references:

  1. Zeno of Cyprus, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius

Food for thought only at $1

“Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.“

“A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely shape his circumstances.“

– James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

The best thing about books is the value they provide compared to their cost. Books are the materialistic vessels which contain streams of the incomparable, unbound and unfathomable ocean of knowledge. I will discuss one such small- yet very impactful book by James Allen called “As A Man Thinketh”

The book is the epitome of common saying “good things come in small packages”. This book is mere collection of seven essay-like chapters which emphasizes on the importance of our thoughts /thinking and their impact on our life, circumstances, success/ failure, body. This small self-help book is the perfect distillate of the ideas in philosophy related to our thoughts – our thinking. Nobody should miss this book.

The author James Allen intended this book to remain concise, compact. James Allen was a British philosopher, poet and is called the pioneer of self-help movement. Buddha and his teachings – one of the influences on James Allen seem to reflect themselves in this book. He also calls this book “little volume (the result of meditation and experience)”. The book is also said to inspire one of the bestsellers called ‘The Secret’ which focuses on the Law of attraction.

Let us dive into the seven short yet insightful ideas explained in the book ‘As A Man Thinketh’.     

1. Thought and character

Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruit.

James develops this idea from the logic of Cause and Effect. Anything we do will have a favorable or unfavorable outcome which decides whether it will make us happy or sad. If sweet or sour fruits are the effect then their cause is the action taken.

But what is the cause to the effect of taking an action?

James expresses ‘the thought’ as the cause for actions. We are what we think. Our every minuscule, insignificant seeming yet impactful thoughts and their collection make us who we are which thereby enables us to act in a specific way. Some may consider this as a behavior, the attitude of a person. James wants to make readers aware of the control they can have on their life by having control on their thoughts, thereby the actions they will take and the outcomes of these actions  

Man is always the master even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in is weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his “household”

2. Effect of thought on circumstances

The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires, – and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.

Here, in the second part James expands the idea of cause and effect of our thoughts causing our “attitude” which causes our actions in a specific way giving us “our character”. This idea is also somewhat similar with the thought expressed by Carl Jung- Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst as follows:

“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

– Carl Jung

This reinforces that the thoughts are responsible for every action we take. No matter how spontaneous they may seem but they are the outcomes of our deep, hidden thoughts and they may remain unconscious for us. That is why James says “soul attracts that which it secretly harbours”. These conscious, unconscious thoughts inspire actions in a specific manner and the outcomes are revealed as the mannerisms of the actions taken. Hence, our thoughts give birth to the circumstances around us.    

Justice

The idea of reaping what we sow is central here. James calls it ‘the exact justice’. Rather than circumstances shaping the person, James highlights that the person is the cause of his circumstances which are linked to his/her attitude which is ultimately linked to the thoughts.

Ignorance

James expands the idea of circumstances to the desires, wishes of every person. In almost every case a person has the solution for the problem right in front of her/him, but they chose to ignore because it will cost them to change themselves and the anxiety associated with changing themselves.

If one eliminates this ignorance of the obvious yet anxious seeming change/ improvement, then she/he will become free. This means that one has to sacrifice her/his current attitude, current thought to improve personally thereby to improve the circumstances.  

Good and Evil

James clears the idea of being good or being bad. In simple words, they are considered as a superficial tag or quick judgemental opinion of every person.

There are many examples in everyone of our lives when we feel that the dishonest man got the success and honest man failed greatly.  

According to James’s idea of “Exact Justice”, the person having complete and absolute knowledge would have gone beyond good and bad, success and failure. She/he would consider them as a part of their evolution, part of their ongoing experiences.  

Blessedness and Wretchedness

James discusses here the idea of suffering which seems to be influenced highly by the teachings of Buddha. Desires are the root of suffering. James calls the suffering as the effect of wrong thought. When one loses the harmony with her/his thoughts then only she/he suffers.

Blessedness hence is originated from the right thought, however materialistically poor a person may be and wretchedness is originated from the wrong thought, however materialistically a rich may be. Right thoughts meaning the harmony of a person with his doings and ultimately the thoughts responsible for them.  

Introspection

Again, based on the law of justice of the universe, James establishes that, once a man accepts that his thoughts are responsible for the conditions around him, he starts tuning his thought in a way to change the conditions, people and their behavior towards him. This is possible only by the power of Self analysis and introspection, James says.

This seems like the core inspiring idea behind the development of the book called “The Secret” which calls for the Law of attraction.

Good and bad Habits

The collection of continuous thoughts in certain way creates a channel of certain continuous actions thereby creation of routines leading to the formation of habits. Our thoughts even may seem untouchable, non-physical but they manifest themselves into our actions in a specific way thereby swiftly developing our habits. These then create the circumstance of certain outcome.

James calls it as the “crystallization” of thoughts into habits and further “solidification” of these habits into the circumstances.

3. Effect of thought on Health and The Body

The body is delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is impressed, and habits of thoughts will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it.

James considers the body as a servant of the mind. In simple words, the body is the materialistic extension of our untouchable, non-physical thoughts. Hence, thoughts drive the body and the health. That is why a healthy mind will always crave for healthy food, healthy and hygienic habits. The neat and healthy living is the effect of the neat and healthy thinking.

With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun.

In one sentence – “Age is just a number”. It is all in the thought of ours which determines how young we are.

4. Thought and Purpose

Even if he (a man) fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph

James wants to establish the concept of failures as a part of life and their contribution in the ultimate success. Overcoming the failures is only possible when a person has found the purpose. This purpose then makes him to accept the failure, strengthen himself to face the failure again and to finally become strong to overcome it.

In simple way- when a person accepts the fact that, in order to become successful, one will go through multiple failures, the first step towards success is taken. In the process of overcoming these failures he will become strong; he will gain the strength to ultimately achieve the true success.

Purpose will guide the person through the failures.  

5. The Thought-Factor in achievement

Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and nature.

Here, James follows the idea of strengthening oneself to overcome the failures. This will need sacrifice. The sacrifice intended here is of the selfishness. Because selfishness indicates attachment, attachment induces desires and failure to get these desires makes the person to lose the said harmony of thoughts and actions. The true achievement James establishes here is the freedom – what some may call as “Mukti” as mentioned in Hinduism. This needs upliftment of thoughts which is only possible by letting go of materialistic desires and acceptance of true knowledge, true purpose.

6. Visions and Ideals

Dreams are the seedlings of realities

James Allen calls the dreamers as the saviors of the world. The idea is that visions are one structured way of inspiring thoughts which go on accumulating to cause an action in a constructive way thereby manifesting a good habit. This good habit will be responsible for the harmonious circumstances which is the ultimate purpose of the life. James clarifies that the idle wish is not the Vision.

In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not.

James denies the existence of chance, luck through the idea. It is therefore is established here that there are only thoughts conscious or unconscious they may be which are ultimately responsible for who we are and what is happening with us and how we accept and react to it.

Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; They are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.

This idea again focuses on actions thereby the thoughts responsible for these actions which are the key parts of human evolution in physical and non-physical ways. The vision brings thoughts into the reality of action, drives it or gives it a purpose.  

7. Serenity

Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.

Serenity in the end is intended to calm ourselves our of all the thoughts we have. This demands to establish control on our thoughts thereby controlling the actions and circumstances.

These are the seven core ideas of James Allen’s intellectual and philosophical masterpiece. ‘As A Man Thinketh’ itself builds a bridge between eastern and western philosophies in an effective way. The ideas also bring religious thought processes from Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. The book being so small yet expressing such vast and exhaustive ideas definitely highlights the power of few pages bearing, single dollar costing book with such a strong thoughts and ideas. Definitely a must read.