Raising boys to be men is one of the great challenges of our time. Traditional notions of masculinity have been seriously obscured in recent decades, giving rise to a false dilemma of either toxic masculinity or mere effeminacy. Neither one, of course, is true masculinity. And directing boys toward these false solutions hurts both them and society.
How do we recover a proper understanding of masculinity and manhood, one that avoids both of the extremes described above? One place to look is in classic literature.
The late 19th- and early 20th-century poet Rudyard Kipling provided us with a snapshot of traditional ideals of manhood in his celebrated poem “If.” The poem was inspired in part by a friend of Kipling’s, Leander Starr Jameson, and his unsuccessful military action in South Africa.
In his memoirs, Kipling wrote, “Among the verses in Rewards was one set called ‘If.’ … They were drawn from Jameson’s character, and contained counsels of perfection most easy to give.”
The poem is addressed to an unnamed boy or son and lists a series of conditions for becoming a man. The basic structure is, “If you can do all these things, you will be a man.” Here are some of the lessons contained in the poem that can help us recover authentic masculinity.
Self-Confidence
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;
Here, Kipling reminds young men of the necessity of maintaining a quiet confidence in their own values, capabilities, and ideas—even when others are challenging them. Manhood requires a sense of identity rooted in what you stand for and what you know you are capable of accomplishing. A masculine man has principles and knows he is able to live up to them. This gives him a steadiness of character even in the most chaotic of situations.
Self-confidence is distinct from arrogance, of course, which, often enough, is just a mask used to hide internal insecurity. The man who is truly confident in himself doesn’t have to constantly prove it to others. At the same time, even the confident man knows that he doesn’t know everything and has the humility to listen to the perspectives of others and take them into account.
Overcoming Human Respect
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;
Because of his quiet confidence in himself and his beliefs, a man can withstand the false accusations or misrepresentations of others. He is not a slave to human respect. He doesn’t lose his calm even when others think badly of him or speak untruths about him. Since he knows that his value as a man doesn’t depend on what others think of him, he can maintain peace in the face of unjust criticism or even falsehoods. Like a man striding through a flurry of dried leaves, he doesn’t allow trivial things to divert him from his path.
Kipling suggests, too, that the true man doesn’t stoop to vengeful tactics, such as returning lie for lie or hatred for hatred. Remaining free from the tyranny of human respect helps a man accept injustices done to him without giving in to the urge to treat others unjustly in response.
Setting Goals and Facing Setbacks
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;
The first two lines of this stanza include balanced halves, separated by the hyphen: “dream—and not make dreams your master”; “think—and not make thoughts your aim.” Here, Kipling points to the necessity of balance in a man of true character. For instance, he should be ambitious and able to imagine better futures, yet not to the point that he allows his ambitions to dominate him or override his principles. Likewise, a man of character is a man of thought, but not only thought. He must be a man of action, too, whose thoughts and ideals bear fruit in the tangible world.
This stanza also introduces an idea that will run through the rest of the poem: perseverance in the face of setbacks and disappointments. Whether facing success or failure, triumph or disaster, a masculine man carries forward with his duty unwaveringly. Kipling uses the odd term “impostors” to describe both “Triumph” and “Disaster.” This suggests that a man of character is not defined by either success or failure. They ought not to become his whole identity or replace who he fundamentally is.
Persistence and Courage
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;
In these stanzas Kipling carries forward the idea of success and failure and a masculine response to them. The main virtue he extolls here is persistence, even when all your work is undone and your greatest achievements crumble and fall. The masculine man sets to work again. And again. As often as he must, with that same unbroken determination. The most catastrophic setbacks don’t drive a man to surrender what he believes in, nor to take his hand from the plow once he has begun to cut the furrow.
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!’
One of the most inspiring stanzas of the poem, this one hones in on the necessity of determination. A true man is capable of making commitments and holding to them because he has the strength of will to “hold on” even when “heart and nerve and sinew” have given way—that is, even when his own feelings and body are rebelling against him. He remains master of himself through the strength of his will, which, once committed to some noble end, will not buckle under any amount of pressure.
A true man has a place inside him where he can go to. A reserve that he can call upon. The ability to knuckle down, beat back the pain, and break through the final barrier when everyone else has given up.
Virtue and Identity
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;
In this final stanza, Kipling returns to an idea articulated at the beginning: fidelity to yourself and your values. A true man will not be swayed from the path of virtue by those around him. He will not be degraded by the crowds nor puffed up into arrogance by “kings.” He will not scorn others, but neither will he allow them to dictate to him how he must behave. This gives him, again, a kind of freedom, such that he does not allow his identity to get tied up in pleasing friends or combatting enemies.
Kipling concludes the poem:
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!
A few final notes are in order. Kipling closes with an indirect reference to the importance of time. The wise man knows how to make progress toward his goals—”distance run”—in even a single minute. This is the final “if” before the conclusion: “yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.” The point here is that the man of virtue and character achieves a kind of mastery over the world, not in the sense of literally ruling everything, but in the sense that he is able to achieve goals, remain independent of the fickleness of human opinion, and rise above every challenge.
But of even greater value than this mastery over the world is what the boy who takes this advice will become: a “Man.” More important than all the worldly achievement that follows from true masculinity is the value inherent in living a life of virtue and becoming a man of character. Of course, the conditionality of that resounding “if” that runs through the poem expresses the difficulty of achieving the ideal laid out here. Yet it also suggests that the ideal is not out of reach for those willing to live with integrity.
