Is the poem "If", by Rudyard Kipling Motivational or just Stoic Advice? →

Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem “If” in 1895 when he was 31 years old. He had one son, John Kipling, who was born in 1897. It is believed that when he wrote this poem he was intending to help his son understand life and human nature.

John Kipling went to war in France and died on Sept 27, 1915 in the Battle of Loos. His father, who had used his contacts to obtain an officer's commission for him, and then when he was killed, spent much of his later life searching for the boy he called Jack, who had died without his father knowing where he had been buried.

The advice to his son suggests a motivational focus on getting on with life and finding out about the world. The poem suggests meeting life with a stoic attitude which suggests that unhappiness was caused by trying to control events that we have little say over with and doing so with a calm indifference to external circumstances.

To answer the question as to whether this poem is motivational or just stoic leads to the additional question as to whether it is realistic? It doesn’t seem like having this poem from his father to refer to was much of a help for John Kipling. Maybe it motivated him to go to war. Maybe it deceived him concerning the real world that he would face, but something was obviously missing.

Perhaps one answer to the question is that common sense was missing in this formula for life. Virtue is assumed to be sufficient for happiness, but that does not guarantee the resilience to recover from failure.

The poem does offer an idealistic outlook that many have found deep connection with in this poem. Poetry can serve more than one purpose and perhaps for some, we the reader can enjoy the poem and find our purposes in it.

This Poem inspired my own book:

Embrace Life’s Randomness: Breathe in the Amazing