“Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
“Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
“Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself ...”
I remember it well, from those disaffected days of youth when I was an outlaw. Yes, I was a pirate and, at Sunshine Radio in Dublin, Desiderata was broadcast nightly, rounding off another day in our crusade for independent radio back in the 1980s.
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We had sex maybe once a month. The constant rejection was soul-crushing, it felt like my ex didn’t even like me
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We succeeded too. But “Going placidly ... ”? Hardly.
Desiderata has an air of ancient, distilled wisdom about it but, despite rumours that it originated in 1692, it was written by American Max Ehrmann and first published in 1927.
In my mind’s eye, Desiderata is always linked with that other highly aspirational poem, If, written by Rudyard Kipling in 1895 and published in 1910.
“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, ...” Ah now! Then, you’re on a different planet, my son.
Chilean writer Pablo Neruda referred to If as “pedestrian and sanctimonious poetry, precursor of the Reader’s Digest”. But I do like that line about walking with kings and not losing the Roscommon touch. Okay, I added the Ros- bit.
Kipling is said to have written If for his son John who, aged 18, was killed in France during the first World War.
Generally, I regard this sort of “exhorting poetry” as harmless, but best served with loads of salt.
If you can sit quietly amid the noise and haste on receiving bad news or listen calmly while misinformation is spewed as fact. If you can keep your head when they blame this on you and wait and wait until the truth reveals itself, then you are probably a dog, my son.
Desiderata, Latin plural of desideratum – “something for which desire is felt.”
