What is it that defines a person of substance?

I have been turning that question over in my mind a lot lately.

The closest I can come to answering this question is: Honesty, and the emotional and mental fortitude to do the right thing, even when the weaker parts of your heart and mind are pulling you off course are what makes a person of substance.

Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem IF….. and I think it beautifully articulates what it means to be a person of substance.

Rudyard Kipling

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!

I love every single line of this poem.

To not hate because you are hated… to not lie because you are lied to… to hold on when you want to let go….  I cannot think of a better way to aspire to be.

And that is why I love this poem, with just 32 lines Kipling conveys so much about who we are and who we hope to be.