IF

I'm not certain if I mentioned it in a previous post but I clearly remember saying to myself and a few close friends & family that I thought the first couple of months after I moved to Norway would probably be fun and then get increasingly difficult, stressful and depressing until the end of the first year. I then suspected it would get easier after that and hopefully truly comfortable and at home after around three years. Given I am fortunate enough to have time on my side still being just 22, this was a timetable I had accepted.

I am now just three days off the two month mark and I think I am well on target. I have been slightly negative at moments but largely things have been really fun. A few nights out, a couple of little trips, visitors from home and the best mark I could have hoped for in my degree. I must look back very fondly on most of that time.

The low feelings however are slowly peering their ugly heads in small waves as I plod along day to day, searching for jobs and generally just waiting for something immense to happen. This will however not be a negative post, oh no! Instead I will share one of my tricks for staying positive, and it is through the words of 'IF' by Rudyard Kipling. I remember few things from my childhood as clearly as I remember the first time my Dad read me this poem. I was instantly moved by it and kept a copy in my room for a quick read whenever I was feeling down. 

Years later it still works as well as it ever did, I'm sure many of you would have heard it many times but I just read it after receiving my fifth job rejection e-mail in two days and I felt the need to remind the world of these wise words. I have been heavily considering getting IF tattooed somewhere and if it carries on keeping me upbeat I think I will have to.

http://vimeo.com/1305608

The link is to a slightly better quality version of the same video. Personally I prefer to read the poem out loud to myself to get the full effect hence why I have posted the whole thing below. However this is a really nicely put together video that is well worth a look at.

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 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!