A Personal Vision of Living a Full Life

In school we're given letter grades like A's or B's, or graded on percentages like 95% or 81%. Once we've graduated, we certainly continue to be judged by others and ourselves (sometimes cruelly so) but it's no longer clear what we need to study, who the teacher is, what the correct answers are, when the tests are given, and how close we are to an A or 100%. Are we doing enough? Are we doing too much? Are we doing the "right" thing? Are we going in the "right" direction?

I don't think there is one single correct answer to those questions, but I do think there is value in answering for ourselves what we want to see when we look back on our lives decades in the future. Without that personal guiding vision for how to fully live our own life, we can easily become distracted and disheartened when challenges arise all around us. Rudyard Kipling is one of many people through the centuries who offered his vision for living abundantly. Below is his classic poem "If."

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 imposters 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!

What would you write to your own son or daughter (or niece or nephew) about what it means to fully live their life? How could they live life so fully that they have the Earth and everything that's in it? Are you living the vision that you want for them, or are you holding yourself to a higher, harsher standard?

May you embrace your own gentle vision of fully living life, and let its light guide you through any darkness!

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