‘IF’ by Rudyard Kipling
ft. The Middle-Raged Dad (and probably Justin Bieber)
(2019 Remix)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing their shit and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when everyone else tells you it’s chocolate, but you know better,
But make allowance for their doubting, and give it a quick sniff anyway;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, even though you’re really fucking tired all the time,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, unless it’s that one about Father Christmas, or the Tooth Fairy, because those are good lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, even when Isaac is being a cock again,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise. Because, let’s face it, you DON’T look good these days, and you haven’t made sense in weeks:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master, it means you’ve had more than two hours consecutive sleep, which is a win,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim – when you are not sat on the toilet,
If you can answer your wife, when she asks ‘what are you doing in the kitchen?’, with the reply ‘marinating my chicken’, yet still not snigger like a child,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster (or Ollie and Isaac, as you prefer to call them),
And treat those two impostors just the same (except you don’t, because at any given time you have a favourite);
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken (because she’s bound to repeat it when you least expect it)
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or a den for the kids,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken – like the house, the car, your left foot on that fucking piece of lego….
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools (assuming you can even find your tools, because the tool box went missing months ago, and the last time you needed to put a picture up you had to use a shoe as a hammer):
If you can make one heap of all your winnings (or, if not, a giant mountain of laundry),
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, rock-paper-scissors, or even ‘pull my finger’,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings (or at least pre-children),
And never breathe a word about your loss, because other parents may judge you;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew, and occasionally your right hip if it will only stop clicking for five fucking minutes,
To serve your turn long after they are gone to school,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you (because the kids ate the last of the cereal),
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
But they ignore you and do it anyway.
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or at least master sleeping with your eyes open
‘Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, but a swift kick to the trouser-clams makes you want to vomit and cry at the same time,
If all men count with you, but none too much, because they too are fathers and have their own shit to deal with;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, because sixty seconds is all you can manage these days (and we’re not just talking about running anymore, are we?);
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Middle-Raged Dad, my son!
Thanks for reading x
Confessions of a Middle-Raged Dad 