Edward Frost's reaction to IF poem ....

What do I find frightening about Kipling’s poem? Well, I remember one of my psychology professors, talking about all these "ifs" for becoming a man and saying, "Your work, ladies and gentlemen, is to be done among those who whisper to themselves, 'But what if I can’t?'"

Kipling’s man was the idealized Victorian model. He was epitomized by the British Officer, ramrod straight on his white horse, buttoned up to his beard in a wool uniform in the middle of the desert prepared to show those ragged beggars screaming before him how an Englishman dies. "Mad dogs and Englishmen," wrote Noel Coward, "go out in the noonday sun." If, by some chance, this quintessential male did not die out there buttoned up with his boots on, he went home to teach his children how to be just like him -- endeavoring not to get too close to them in the process. His children, like those ragged beggars out there, were in need of being civilized.

Obviously, most of our fathers and most of us have not come home fresh from gifting the world with civilization at the point of our ceremonial swords. But what all that really boils down to is -- Success. It is impressed upon the male -- which is what fathers are made of -- that, whether they live in the age of Hannibal or Hank, they must, above all, be successful. And they must be successful at everything from running companies, preaching sermons, playing basketball in the driveway, earning a living, staying alive, and obviously, above all, not failing. For some men, successfully cutting in line at the exit is about the only hope for self-esteem they’ll have today. I contend that that’s a lot to handle and that, for most fathers, it doesn’t leave much left over for blessing our children, for being a successful father, or for even being conscious of what that might mean.