Junkyard

Read the new book by Richard Branson:
"Business Striped Bare"

I found this poem after the epilogue.

If you can...

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 you.
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 to good, nor talk to 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 trap for fools;
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken;
And stoop and build them up with worn out tools.

If you can make heap of all your winnings,
And risk it on one touch 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’re 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 earth and everything that’s in it,
And- which is more- you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling