Today, I’m going to take a page from my book, DARE, since my friend Rusy Shroff, decided to immortalise a poem I’ve always cherished, with his voice, which if you click on the link, further down, you will hear as he speaks these wonderful words out!
Even as you face rejection in your journey through life, and as you DARE to DREAM, let me share the words of that poem that kept my dream burning bright and steadfastly.
It was that of a poem I’d read, and then copied out in red ink and as a teenager had stuck it to the side of my bedpost, so I could read it every night before going to bed and each morning when I woke up.
I can’t think of a better poem to read when you wake up, then this. A poem which taught me to push on, despite any setbacks I’d faced the previous day.
A poem that taught me to put in every effort to become a winner, in whatever I put my mind to. The poem went like this:
If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don't,
If you like to win, but you think you can't
It is almost certain you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you're lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will
It's all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!”
– Walter D. Wintle
I can still see that bedpost in my mind’s eye. Last year I went to that little house where I lived as a child. It looked smaller, older and quite rundown. I saw a window was open and peeped in. My wife who accompanied me must have thought I was peering nostalgically at memories of my growing up years.
I was, but I was looking a little deeper, at a cot which was not there anymore and a poem in red, stuck to it, and in my mind, I heard myself repeat the last verse, which was my life’s marching song, “‘Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, But soon or late the man who wins is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!”
And if you’d like to hear my friend Rusy give voice to these powerful words, click on this link, https://youtu.be/DUjgHJrOjaE?
i=7DW8VYfIM7d0DoUd and feel the power of words that changed my life..!
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author. He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com
