Rudyard Kipling, Michael Caine, and the Testicle-Punching Self-Help Industrial Complex

I woke up and, like any good, sane, and sensible human being, I picked up my phone, headed to the commode, sat on the toilet, and started my productivity ritual of doomscrolling.

And in between my highly productive doomscrolling, I came across a video of the legendary Michael Caine reciting Rudyard Kipling’s If—, one of his favorite poems.

So I read through the poem. And it’s brilliant. The poem is basically a father’s advice to his son on how to be a man. And I mean, as far as advice goes, it’s pretty good. Of course, the thing about advice is that you can’t generalize it. And sure, you can nitpick this or that. But I think you can do a lot worse than following the advice Rudyard Kipling gives.

Here’s the full poem, in case you’ve never read it or need a refresher:

If—

by Rudyard Kipling

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 on one turn 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 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!

Reading If also reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about lately: self-help books.

Why do people read so many of them? The popularity of that genre genuinely baffles me. I mean, maybe there are a few positives — I’ll grant that. But for the most part, I think they’re kind of useless. Most of them would be more helpful if you just buried them in the ground and used them as manure to grow something useful.

Honestly, you’d probably get more out of reading a poem like If, which is free, timeless, and actually says something, than spending ₹200–₹300 on garbage like The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, The Scientist Who Folded His Underwear, The 5 A.M. Club, The 6 A.M. Cult, Think Rich, Get Rich, or Punch Yourself in the Testicles and Change Your Life. (Okay, that last one doesn’t exist. Yet.)

Anyway, I also read the Wikipedia page of the poem and It was fascinating.

And that’s where I learned If— is one of the most popular poems in Britain, something of a cultural touchstone. It’s taught in schools. In India, they take it very seriously. A framed copy of the poem is literally stuck on the wall above the study desks in the cabins of officer cadets at the National Defence Academy in Pune and the Indian Naval Academy in Ezhimala.

Even Khushwant Singh — yes, that Khushwant Singh — once said that If— was basically “the essence of the message of the Gita in English.” Which is… kind of wild. And kind of true?

And then, the best part: Pablo Neruda apparently hated the poem.

Here’s the quote from the Wikipedia page:

Neruda dismissed If— as “that pedestrian and sanctimonious poetry, precursor of the Reader’s Digest, whose intellectual level seems to me no higher than that of the Duke of Alba’s boots.”

Oof. Brutal. But also… kind of funny?

Then I asked ChatGPT a bunch of questions and here’s what it taught me.

First, If— wasn’t just a burst of paternal wisdom. Kipling wrote it around 1895, and it was inspired by Leander Starr Jameson, the man behind the failed Jameson Raid in South Africa. Despite the fiasco, Jameson’s calm and composure turned him into a kind of stoic folk hero. So that famous opening line — “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…” — is rooted in a very specific imperial mess.

Second, If— became massive. In 1995, it was voted the UK’s favourite poem in a BBC poll. Its verses are engraved on the walls of Centre Court at Wimbledon and on plaques, pavements, and posters across the world. In India, it’s framed above the study desks in the cabins of cadets at the National Defence Academy in Pune and the Indian Naval Academy in Ezhimala. It’s taught in schools, quoted by athletes and politicians, and generally treated as a secular scripture for the “tough it out” generation.

Third, Kipling himself got kind of sick of it. Decades after writing If—, he complained that the poem had been “anthologised to weariness” and mentioned in his autobiography that it had become so widely used — printed on cards, embroidered on cushions, even used to punish students — that it started to work against him. Kids would write to him saying, “Why did you write that stuff? I’ve had to write it out twice as an impot.”
(Wikipedia, Poets.org)

Fourth, there’s the matter of Kipling himself. He’s one of the most celebrated writers in English, sure. But he was also an unapologetic imperialist. He wrote The White Man’s Burden, supported British colonial rule, and held views that make modern readers — especially in post-colonial countries — wince a bit (or a lot). Reading If— today means holding that tension: the poem might speak to your soul, but its author helped write the soundtrack of empire. Context matters.
(Rudyard Kipling – Wikipedia, The White Man’s Burden – Wikipedia)

So yeah. That’s what I learned.

Not bad for a Monday morning.