The Jungle Book which is currently out in cinemas is smashing box office records and it is a timeless classic which is loved by both kids and adults. Rudyard Kipling wrote these short stories as fables more then a century ago using animals to stand in for humans and to teach us the moral lessons about life. The book eventually became to be a motivational book for cub scouts and for young kids.
But what we tend to overlook is the beautiful poem Rudyard wrote a year after the Jungle which is written in the form of paternal advice to his son and is a literary example of Victoria -era stoicism in action.
The poem is called 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.
To me what Rudyard is talking about is stickability. IF you can stick with your plan, whether its a movie you want to produce, a story you want to write, a film you want to direct or a role you want to act in as long as you stick to your path, long enough, it will materialise.
Harrison Ford, the actor, said it best when he’d got into acting, there were so many actors that would come and go and stop and start, but he know that his secret to success would be to outlast them all. IF he just hung out long enough he’d eventually be successful and he was.
So stay committed to your path. Be willing to do that. Make it instinctive, a part of your life and before you know it it will be yours just as the earth and everything that’s in it.
Use the jungle force film rebel and be the IF.
