A to Z Challenge: I is for If and Ithaca

This is an erroneous post. It shouldn't be here. You should understand how fried my brain is given that I'm going back in the alphabet. Too many things floating around loose in there. 

I'm going to be very banal and leave here for Beckett the mothers of all paternal advice. Lets start with Ithaca because I think this is more important and in line with how I view life.

Ithaca

As you set out for Ithaca

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithacas mean. 

And now for If. But this is really not coming from me, this is not me. I'm a man full of flaws and follies. I have no right to preach this. I give 'If' to Beckett more as a student and peer than as a preacher of it.

If

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!

P.S: The amazing thing about Gujarati, my mother tongue is that I can call Beckett by the word for 'son', but if I ever have a son, I can never address him by the word for 'daughter'. Only daughters have that privilege and right.

Many thanks to Messers Cavafy and Kipling for their kind wise words.