Have you ever read the "If"?

What do you know about Rudyard Kipling? I guess your answer is something like this: "He is an English writer who wrote the Mowgli." I would say something like that recently but now I have discovered that firstly his Mowgli is the Jungle Book actually. Second thing is that he wrote two Jungle books and third is that he isn't just a novels' writer. He is a journalist and a poet as well.

I have read his poem "If" a week ago and I couldn't help but share my thoughts on that poem to my friend, who also loves to expand his horizons. The only question was how to intrigue him to start searching for this poem by himself, without forcing from my side. I decided to write out the most interesting things about the "If" plus my own thoughts and conclusions before meeting with my friend.

First of all, I noticed a link between the "If" by Kipling and the "French Lessons" by Rasputin. That link is the game both authors mention in their works. These are the different but very similar gambling games. In the Kipling poem it is the "pitch-and-toss" game and in Rasputin's work that's "wall-to-wall".

Pitch-and-toss is a simple coin game known by this name in England. Players have to line up a fixed distance from a wall. Then one by one each player tosses his coin, all of which have to be the equal denomination, towards the wall. The goal is to just toss the coin as close to the wall as possible. Whose coin is the closest to the wall is the winner, he collects up all the coins.

Some forms require the players to toss the coins the way they hit the wall to be considered as a valid throw.

In wall-to-wall the rules are very similar. Your opponent throws his coin against the wall and then you throw your coin. After it landed you try to reach your fingers from your coin to opponent's one. If you get it, you win and collect up both coins.

As you can see these games are siblings and both are really simple. If start playing any of these games you just can't stop for a long time.

So, that would be the first thing I would say to my friend to get him intrigued: "Can you say one thing that unites two different works of two different writers? One work is the "If" by Rudyard Kipling, other is the "French lessons" by Rasputin Valentin." That would have to make my friend start searching for both works, for sure.

If it didn't work I would say that: "Did you hear about The New Yorker or The New York Times Book Review?" No matter what kind of answer I would hear from my friend I say him that this two magazines are famous. Then I would add that The New Yorker is an independent magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It would be a good start to tell him the story I heard about one editor, named Charles McGrath. He is a former deputy editor of The New Yorker and a former editor of The New York Times Book Review. He wrote that when he was in school "they had to recite Kipling's "If" every day, right after The Pledge of Allegiance." These words mean a lot to those who know and understand what is The Pledge of Allegiance. For those who didn't hear about that I can say only that you could see in American movies how they stand at attention with right hands over their hearts and do this speech. I am sure you saw this scene a lot of times but maybe hadn't thought about the meaning.

The knowledge that some Americans recite a poem right after The Pledge of Allegiance would make me search for that poem to understand better what is going on. My friend, as I know him, will do the same.

I won't write here the whole text of Kipling's "If" because you have to search it on your own if my article caught your attention. But I'd like to say that this poem made me think about my time with much more respect. That's true, now I see the power of the words of that poem and why some pupils had to recite them. It seems strange that after a few years of reading and watching time management, self improvement, self discipline content I have found suddenly the great power of the Time only in this poem. I am really surprised by this fact but it works and I am glad to see the changes in my life due to that Kipling's work.

Maybe that's just a last drop or an accumulation effect results but it has worked to me anyway and I hope that it will work to you with your goals or just daily routine, as well. That's the reason I have written this article.