A new beginning, isn't that always the reckoning ?!

The end, of another year. The festive mood of Christmas is always a wonderful way to end a year and look forward to a new one. January 1st is just another day in every respect, but end of a calendar year is always a good time for some retrospection and introspection, for the best thing about closure is the promise of a new beginning.

Personally, 2012 was an eventful year for me. I hope the lessons learnt from experiences stay forever and help in navigating through the future in an effective and fruitful way. Perhaps the biggest lesson of all came in form of a poem titled 'If', by Rudyard Kipling. Though I've read it before as a teenager, it is a wonderful feeling to come across it again, after almost a decade and find new meanings out of the same words.

I share it here in the hope that the reader finds it relevant and takes inspiration from the poem. Also, I came across a recitation of the poem by Sir Michael Caine and couldn't stop myself from adding some music to it to add some flavour!

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!