IF

I recently read a review that talks about how, in Politics, how we’re so uptight to say precisely the right thing to precisely the right group of people at precisely the right time…we have polls, and numbers and consultants and advisers-and everything is so planned out in advance that when we citizens finally do hear the speech-it’s so blase, scripted and unemotional that it’s uninspiring.

People are no longer inspired. Especially by Politicians.

why? because it’s recognized that nobody has the courage to say what needs to be said. Those inconvenient truths [pun intended] that nobody wants to hear? it doesn’t have to be pessimism. It can be reality- but it can be the blunt truth. Since when did we become thin skinned as to not be able to stand the truth? Is there no one that can speak from the gut any more? is there nobody who can say the unvarnished truth. And when I say the the ‘truth’- I mean precisely that- the honest no bull-shit truth. I do not mean words that will get one elected.  Are the days of people like Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Harry Truman dead? Why is it people watch sports and are always rooting for the underdogs? why do we go to movies? why do we admire people who strive for something that seems unattenable? Marvel at people who can climb Mt.Everest? Or even raise themselves out of poverty and put themselves through school? Or better yet..put their kids through school? It’s all for the same reason- they inspire us to dream of the impossible. Maybe I’m wrong and Politicians today just can’t afford to say the unvarnished truth without it being political suicide- but I sure wouldn’t mind someone trying that approach… even just a little bit.

I leave you with a poem by Rudyard Kipling:

‘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 all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath 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!