IF

Scattered Gulls--Wrightsville Beach, NC

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;...
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
--Rudyard Kipling

These first and last lines of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "If", are great advice during the most tumultuous times of our lives. When a situation gets really tense, really fast, it's best to be like a duck--calm on the surface (so folks around you don't panic), but paddling like crazy under the surface (so you can react decisively).