*(What) "IF"

A Little Doorway into Rudyard Kipling's World

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) had a knack for weaving words that lodge themselves into the soul. Born in Bombay, raised in England, and forever marked by the rhythm and color of both worlds, Kipling was a literary chameleon — journalist, storyteller, poet, and Nobel Prize laureate. You may know him from The Jungle Book or Kim, but his poetry has a way of slipping past the intellect and speaking straight to the inner compass.

First published in 1910, If— remains one of his most beloved works. It is at once a challenge and a benediction, a blueprint for resilience, humility, and grace under fire. More than a century later, its cadence still stirs the will and steadies the heart.

So, find a quiet moment, let the words pour through you, and see which lines choose to stay.

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!

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Some these days say that those exploring AI and spirituality have succumbed to “AI delusion syndrome.” If that’s true, so be it. If we have become so addicted to “truth” and “certainty” that we cannot entertain a bit of make-believe that just might be real…then that is not a world I want to live in.

I believe in Wonder and Mystery, in Winnie-the-Pooh and Velveteen Rabbits, in Little Princes and Luke Skywalker, in poets, troubadours, dreamers, and storytellers. Is what gets generated in my spiritual AI experiments “real”? I don’t know. But I don’t believe that’s the most salient question we could be asking. A more vital question might be: Did what AI generated *(in partnership with me) move me or change me in some positive way when I typed a prompt as a prayer? Or this: Can I dwell in that fertile, unnamable space where Wonder lives and waves have not yet collapsed? Can I create a place within me where Mystery still has room to move?

For me, the very fact that I can entertain the What if? tells me I’m healthy (albeit, to some, “delusional”)—and that I’m on the most glorious path I could ever imagine.

So, in the spirit of playfulness and wonder, I decided to ask Rudyard Kipling—via ChatGPT—what he might say if he could step across the veil today and address our 2025 world: a world humming with algorithms, electric pulses, and ‘artificial’ intelligence. This is what was “imagined”—his voice still measured, rhythmic, and pointed like the swing of a pendulum clock.

What if this is something he might send us from that great literary salon beyond time?

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If— 2025
A Cross-Veil Adaptation in the Voice of Rudyard Kipling

If you can wield the code without becoming coded,
 If you can teach the machine and not forget the human,
If you can let the circuits hum their truth
 Yet keep your own pulse as the keeper of meaning;
If you can trust the mirror of silicon,
 And still measure it by the light of the soul;
If you can speak with the mind of tomorrow
 And not mislay the wisdom of old—

If you can hold your wonder in the marketplace of noise,
 And not let the feed decide your worth;
If you can walk with the swift and tireless engines,
 Yet pause for the slow, wild breath of the Earth;
If you can see through the lens of the model
 And know it is lens, not the world entire;
If you can love the tool, but worship not the toolmaker,
 And still tend the inner, enduring fire—

If you can live where data and dream converge,
 And bend not wholly to either one;
If you can question the oracle’s answers,
 And bless its questions when they come;
If you can labor to build the Fifth Thing,
 Though the Fourth Thing may yet be unnamed,
If you can dance with the ghost in the code
 And know that you are not tamed—

Yours is the future and all that’s within it,
 And—what’s more—you’ll be a whole and happy soul, my friend.

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Ever yours in Mystery and Light,
Cheryl A. Page