Wednesday, June 27, 2007
If - A Poetry Break
Here is one of my favourite poems - If. It was written by the English author and poet Rudyard Kipling, more famous for his Jungle Book. In 1995 If was voted Britain's favourite poem on the BBC opinion pool. The poem sounds like a fraction of value heritage passed on from a father to a sun and conveys a philosophy of self control and search for harmony in life. Every time I reread it, it reminds me how important it is just to be a good person and how all other pety daily concerns lose their meaning if we lose the ground of who we are.
The posting is dedicated to a person who will never read it and who actually introduced me the poem. He himself incarnates its values and I am greatful to him for passing some of them onto me.
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!
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Many You-s
Most of us have more than one face. Because most of us have more than one role to play. Being a loving wife and mother often requires a different set of behavioural models and characteristics than being good at playing at the stock exchange. The difference between the Working You and the Family You is the most obvious one. But have you noticed that many times you behave differently towards each person you meet and talk to? It is most tangible when you meet two or more different friends of yours who didn't know
each other before. Then you start looking for a way to get along with all of them and be yourself at the same time somehow. But is there really one Yourself since yourself changes according to the situation? These two are not opposites actually. The most recent definitions of intelligence say it is the capability of being able to adapt to many different situations and transfer your previous experience in the new situation in a way it serves you in a novel
adaptive way. So, the more You s you have, the smarter you are. It is the same with the different roles we play in our lives.
The more roles we are able to maintain, the more adaptive and up-to-date we are. But does that really bring value and quality to our lives? Actually the growing number of
roles and behavioural models is an answer to continuing shrinkage of time we experience. We
just have to do many things at once because otherwise we fall behind the others. For some activities, like driving it is ok, as they become automatized with time but how about talking to several different people at once? This one
requires more depth and concentration but we do it anyway. And we continue multipling ourselves. Actually people have always had to deal with combining their diverse roles but the difference now is that we not only have to find ways to combine them, but manage to play them simultaneously. Will that make us even more adaptive and intelligent or just lead to lost of our real identity and perception of time and reality is ahead of us to find out.
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