CHOOSING CIVILITY

A bumper-sticker in one Central Maryland County offers the simple words, “Choose Civility.” Each time I’ve seen the bumper-sticker over the past two years or so, I have taken a moment to think about the role of civility in my own life, and in the lives of those around me. Events of recent days remind us how challenging these two words are: from the heckling by U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson (South Carolina) during the speech of President Barack to the joint session of the U.S. Congress; to the threatening, expletive-filled tirade of tennis player Serena Williams toward an tennis official at the U.S. Open; to the inappropriate comments of hip-hop artist Kanye West, directed toward fellow artist Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards – we are reminded of the lack of civility among us, and the potential for harm found in our words and actions. Perhaps the words of British poet, Rudyard Kipling in his 1896 work “IF” are words that we can all use as a means of pointing us back toward civility:


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!