Disclaimer: This poem was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same title with a heavier Christian emphasis.
If
If you can keep your heart when you are broken
And know that you are the most fractured tool
If you can bear to hear the words you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
If you can not be dead when you are tired
But, rather, be the light that you most need
If you can fight against the way you’re wired
And let the rest become at its own speed
If you can open up your hard-earned armor
When someone else has only said a word
That tells you they need something you could give them
If you can let yourself be disinterred
If you can force yourself to serve your master
When you don’t think your master’s there for you
If you can be there, loving higher, faster
If you can never speak unless it’s true
If you can speak your mind, and really mean it
But not as if you valued your thoughts more
If, somehow, when you have not even seen it
You are the hope that opens helpless doors
If you can empathize with random people
Who hold their cardboard signs at junctured streets
And actually do something that will help them
If you can stoop and wash your brother’s feet
If you can be yourself and still be loyal
If you can keep your anger under lock
If you can glow when you would rather boil
If you know pain and still are there to talk
If you can peacemake when your heart’s a duel
If you can feel when all you know is gone
If you can fight the thought that life is cruel
And let your grief be what you stand upon
If you can keep yourself from always venting
But open up your soul to the world’s wounds
If you can slowly break instead of bending
But grow back as a harmony of tunes
If you know how your friend is really feeling
And really say that they are still your friend
If you can passively continue peeling
When you don’t care about how it all ends
If you can really feel the things you think of
But still don’t really know just what you are
If you can know your mind and state its logic
But never stoop to hating others’ stars
If you can feel a tear over a lifetime
And still believe the truth shall set you free
If you don’t see your time as really your time
Then welcome to your realest destiny.