July 29
If you meet with triumph and misfortune / and treat these two impostors just the same; / if you keep your head where everyone loses theirs — / then the world belongs to you, and more than that: you are a human being.
If (freely rendered)
Listening mode
If you meet with triumph and misfortune / and treat these two impostors just the same; / if you keep your head where everyone loses theirs — / then the world belongs to you, and more than that: you are a human being.
When something fails, you look for circumstances almost without meaning to. The timing was bad, a piece of information was missing, someone else didn't deliver. Some of that is even true. You examine the result before you accept it as a verdict on yourself.
When something works out for you, that examination usually doesn't happen. Then the result seems to show fairly precisely what you are capable of. The favourable timing, the help, the chance that opened a door for you: you may still mention them, but more out of politeness.
Meeting both results with the same mistrust is more uncomfortable than it sounds. It takes some of the shine off success, at exactly the moment when you would most like to keep it all to yourself. And conversely, it asks you to see, in failure, the share that really was yours.
In return, neither of them has to tell you who you are anymore. You can still be glad of a success, wholly and completely. You just no longer believe every word it says.
