Date last updated: 07/27/02
Raising sons is a very powerful and emotional thing for this father. I think this feeling is expressed well in the following:
Poem by Rudyard Kipling
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 wornout 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 breath 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!
Prayer written by General Douglas MacArthur:
BUILD ME A SON
"Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is
weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be
proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
"Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should
be; a son who will know Thee....Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease
and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge.
Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion
for those who fail.
"Build me a son whose heart will be clean, whose goal will be high; a
son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who
will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into
the future, yet never forget the past.
"And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of
humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too
seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity
of greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.
"Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, 'I have not lived in vain.'"