IF

IF

A few days ago I received a mail from a friend which read “A two letter word in English has more meanings than any other two letter word and that is ‘up’. It is listed in the dictionary as an adverb, preposition, adjective, verb or a noun”. I enjoyed reading the paragraph with all the usages of ‘up’ incorporated in it. It set me searching for words that had great significance and impact on our lives. In the process I narrowed my search down to three words – a single letter word, another two letter word and a three letter word – ‘I’, ‘If’ and ‘God’. While we have always talked about the first and the third which represent the ego and the all encompassing, we have to recognize the role played by ‘If’ in the conduct of our lives.

For a long time I held the view point that the root cause of misery in our life is the word ‘If’. A majority of us spend our time thinking about the choices we have made in life and how things could have been different ‘if’ we had chosen otherwise. There are certain choices we have made because they were within our power to do so. These are mostly centered round marriage, love life, studies, career etc. Things could have been different and may be I would have led a better life than my present state. I am not happy, I feel miserable. I am helpless when I start questioning my origins and why I was not born under more favorable circumstances. I question God and blame him for all the misery that I am undergoing now. Of course there are no answers, when someone comes along and says it is due to my Karma and I am atoning for my sins in a previous birth. All the same I am miserable. Most of the time, we end up blaming extraneous reasons for our mistakes and retreat into a shell of self pity. In all this, ‘if’ is a post mortem of our past and dissatisfaction with the present reality.

Since then I have realized that I had been unfair to the word ‘If’. This is a word that is a philosophy by itself. I thought that ‘if’ I am in a position to accept the present state of existence than I have been successful in erasing out all negative effects of my past actions. So here ‘if’ lays down a condition to help us towards acceptance so that we move on.

I remembered a poem ‘IF’ by Rudyard Kipling which I had read during my school days. Though I did remember a few lines I had to do some search for the whole poem. I am reproducing only the first stanza and the last four lines here –

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:

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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!

This perhaps is one of the most inspirational and motivational poems to have been written. It was written by Kipling to his son. May be a hundred years have passed since then but the message is eternal. Here ‘if’ lays down the path to a greater understanding and perhaps a way towards achieving the goals we have set for ourselves. Like Kipling says in the last two lines – “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And- which is more- you’ll be a Man my son”.  As per Khushwant Singh,  Kipling's If is "the essence of the message of The Gita in English.

When I read Kipling’s poem again after so many years I was also reminded of John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’.

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 Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Here one realises that this also talks about all the conditions to make the world a better place to live. ‘If’ all this can happen we can have heaven on earth.

When I had remarked that -‘if’ is the root cause of all the misery in this world, my friend replied “The word ‘if’ is an embodiment of pure atheism. Creating certainty is in our hand. Anxiety about future, punctuated by the word "if" is pure atheism, according to Mahatma Gandhi”. I had to take his word, for I have not read Mahatma Gandhi.

While I understand anxiety, I cannot accept that creating certainty is in our hands. Also that ‘if’ is pure atheism. I am sure some of my readers will have their viewpoints on this, which they can share on this space.