freshly sharpened pencils...

I remember my first years of high school being made to cram and recite poems and ideals which were supposed to later shape the man I was to become. We blinded complied and wondered what all the fuss was all about. Well today, one of those poems came back to haunt me. In the midst of all the chaos and mayhem that surrounds, I found myself starting to recite, “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run…”Precious lines from Rudyard Kipling’s poem If.

As I press on with the new career - online media - who would have guessed a mathematician would end up dabbling with the wonderment of the internet? General student-skintness is slowly waning but I think I may be going through some quarter-life crisis: wondering what the hell the rest of my life will be. It’s a period of plenty If’s and each one is extremely open-ended. If this is it then… If this career takes off then… If it ends up Graduate School then… If it’s back to Africa then…Kipling’s poem pretty much brings to life the journey that I have to take here onwards. It’s very prophetic in its statements and yet so candid in its expressions. I could be at my lowest ebb or highest peak and it would still make sense. Those aren't merely just words in four verses. Those are tools, pitch forks and spades, to equip, mould and build every man, woman and child. For your own sake read it:

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!