This morning on … [View all]
Morning Joe, one of the regulars (the guy that wrote the
Double down book) said: “(President) Obama does seem to appreciate the need to make course corrections … He has never had to.” {or words to that effect} He, then, went on to explain (in that couch psychologist way) that because of President Obama’s background … absent father, the string of men, in and out of his mother’s (and his) life, etc., had led President Obama to learn trust/depend on his self, and no one else.
This brought a thought to my mind: “Why? Why should he change courses? Why are so many, so quick to want him to … especially when, to this point, he has made all the ‘right calls’?”
But as I was taking my shower (still bugged with the book guy’s remarks), I thought back to a poem that I was required to learn, while pledging my Fraternity, some 30+ years ago. It so, explains President Obama:
If by Rudyard Kipling
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
= new reply since forum marked as read