The things you gave your life to broken . . .

"If you can bear to see 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 . . . "

Rudyard Kipling must have known a thing or two about life. Though not the greatest writer to ever tread the earth, I sometimes suspect the literary world sells him short - perhaps it is because I, like he, grew up between two cultures, linked to both and identified with neither, that I see in his writings things which I suspect go unnoticed by many readers.

Or, maybe I am just biased in his favor because of this poem. Aside from The Jungle Book, "If" may be Kipling's best-known piece of writing. Although I like it now, my first impulse, years ago, was simple rejection. My 7th grade English teacher handed it out and told us all that we were going to memorize it. As I was, at that time, beginning to define the limits of my own personal sovereignty by delineating what I would and would not do, and as I had a particular aversion to dwarfish, red-haired teachers, I decided that this was one thing I would not be doing. After all, it was difficult, probably nearly impossible, and furthermore, stupid.

I must have thought of something cleverly biting to say about the poem, as I can think of no other reason that informing my father that I was not going to do it should have seemed like a smart idea. He asked for it, and then read it over. I remember him sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed, head bowed over the piece of paper as he read it. He stayed there for a long time. Far longer than I thought necessary.

When he looked up he fixed me with a gimlet eye that only a chicken could approximate for cold, rapacious intensity. It was the look which usually indicated that simply by standing there I was treading a piano-wires thickness away from a death that would surely involve a periodic slow strangulation with my own intestines as a warm-up to actual dismemberment. I guessed the stupidity of the poem had not met his expectation.

My father told me 1. I was going to do it, and 2. He was going to to memorize it with me. He also said that someday I might like it. I doubted this greatly, but was simply grateful that the conversation was brief, and made no mention of the various uses of forks and pliers. My father worked with me, and eventually I did memorize it. And then I forgot it.

Fast forward 20 years and I am working in a greeting card factory over the Xmas break. My job was to load paper into one side of the printing press, then walk around the other side, wait a few minutes, and unload the printed cards back into the box from which they came, and repeat. I was so bored I wished to shoot myself. Many of my university acquaintances had family to go see, a lot of them had enough money that the little bastards didn't have to work, and it is no exaggeration to say that I pitied myself a fair bit.

The clankety-clank-clankety-clank-hiss-clankety-clank-clankety-clank-hiss of the printing press went on for long enough that I found myself in my boredom chanting nonsense to myself, and out of the repetitive chanting the poem, long forgotten, started emerging in bits and snatches. For a few days I worked on reassembling the poem, remembering every day more and more. And slowly, I began to see my current position in a much different light. It didn't matter that some kids got to be lazy and have everything handed to them. It didn't matter that some people had somewhere to go for the holidays. What mattered is how I acted in what I did, and there was a nobility to be found in this experience, if it was approached correctly.

Fast forward 7 years, and I had a private student in Valencia, Spain. He and his family had come to Spain from Argentina, because the economy in Argentina had crashed enough times, and wiped out their savings enough times that they had decided to start a new life. He left his job as a lawyer in Argentina, and was now working occasional work as a night security guard, trying to support his family at the age of 50, struggling to make ends meet, living in a tiny dark apartment, but still managing to take English lessons because they were important to him. I watched Julio and Marta's struggle for months, saw in the unspoken lines around his stories the scrimping that was going on - how he and his wife worked to hide from their daughter the truth of the situation. At around the same time I told them Cyn and I were leaving Spain, he announced to me that they were, too. The savings would soon be tapped out, and they had to go back. I felt so bad for them, to have tried so bravely, and in a sense, failed.

The last time I saw him he gave me a present. It was a piece of paper, of nice stock, longer than normal, rolled up with a ribbon around it. When I unrolled it, it was a pretty script in Spanish. It took me a while to realize that he had given me the poem IF. He said this poem was a beautiful poem, which meant a lot to him.

I can understand why. It speaks of winning and losing and struggle, and how nobility lies not in these things, but in HOW you win and lose and struggle. What I hadn't realized, all those years ago when my father was reading the poem, was that he and my mother had just come through the most difficult struggle of their lives. They had exerted so much effort, on so many fronts, trying to do the correct thing against the odds, and in return, had been told they were failures. They were unfit. What I didn't understand in those days, when I watched my father come home from his job as a carpenter, and sit at the empty table in his workboots and flannel shirt, and night after night silently contemplate his own cracked and skinned hands, was that he was, in his heart, a failure. He had tried, and was trying, but had ended up, after so much effort, in limbo - in a place he didn't want to be, in a job he didn't want to do, watching the years slide by, not knowing where to go.

When Cynthia and I came to Poland, it was for one reason - to get graduate degrees. The money we were making was small, the amount deducted every month for the degree was high. The amount left was barely enough to live on. When we heard that the director of the program was going to be in our town for Thanksgiving, Cynthia volunteered our kitchen and dining room to host the dinner. I stayed dressed in my best, in order to make a good impression when he arrived. It must have succeeded, because a full day and a half later, as he left, he tentatively offered to let us manage the site, in return for one free tuition.

Eventually our responsibilities expanded. In addition to managing all the logistical concerns for the particular site, I took over the admissions process, screening the candidates who wanted to join our program. Cynthia began to do all the liaising with the college in the states. Although our compensation was increased commensurate with our responsibilities, at a certain point we stopped doing it for the financial compensation, and began to do it because we cared. We believed in the vision of this program. The idea that we could serve others, people like us, who had made their lives abroad, and wanted to advance in their careers, yet couldn't afford to uproot their lives and go back to the states to pay for a graduate degree there.

Because we saw ourselves as serving a larger goal, of providing good opportunities for people, we really devoted ourselves to the task. We put in long hours. When we stopped to figure it up, the financial compensation, much appreciated and very needed in our budget, came to no more than minimum wage due to the sheer number of hours we put into the projects. We tried to strengthen the organization, developing best practices and good policies to insure long-term success. We tried to both minimize our financial risk, and introduce a new level of transparency and honesty with the students. We wanted them to know they were important, and that we cared about them.

In return, some said thank you. One class bought us a bottle of vodka. Other's offered to pay us if we split the organization up, and stole it out from under the director. Other's created small tornadoes of intrigue by suggesting that someone was greedily profiting off the students, who were being taken advantage of. The ingratitude and mob-like mentality of any group always amazes me, and has taught me that I should be one who goes out of his way to express gratitude to others, and that I should never expect a group to conform to the rules of reasonable and appropriate behavior we would expect of individuals.

I don't mean to whine here. Some of the students I will remember forever for their decency and kindness - their sheer solid character. I have met some gems, whom I will treasure appropriately. But largely, much of the education I received in this program has been from the schemers and complainers. To them I owe a larger debt of thanks. They have taught me that working overtime for a pittance on someone's behalf is no reason to expect they won't expect more. Temper tantrums on the part of others must be excused. A single sardonic response on my part should never be allowed. As an appointed leader, I must always bring to the table the highest standards of behavior and personal responsibility.

As I said, my wife and I truly bought into the vision of this organization. We gave of ourselves to it. We did everything we could for it, and last Sunday, agreed to let it die.

The program has had difficulty for some time in attracting a sufficient amount of students. We always considered this a marketing matter, and so tried to explore new avenues of making ourselves more visible. These obviously cost more money, which moved us into a precarious situation. We tried starting up a second program, and due to an unfortunate combination of a late start in marketing and a few people pulling out late in the game, ended up under-attended. When a few people who attended later reneged on paying, our position went from precarious to a shade of red. Eventually we recognized the inevitable.

We tried, and hard. We loved it, and it has done something good for a number of students. Every student who graduated while we were working for this organization we count as a success story to our credit. Yet in the end, if not enough people apply, if the balance sheet tips closer and closer to the red, if in the end people do not value what they have received enough to pay for it, if after all the hours and hours of work, it is no closer to being sustainable than before, then perhaps you are not helping people as much as you once thought. If so, you must let it go.

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!

--Rudyard Kipling