the captain of my soul

So I missed four days of work this week because I've been under the influence of the influenza. Timing is horrible as work is hitting a fever pitch these days, but I suppose there is no good time to have your body feel as if you've been hit by a ten-ton truck (insert any of your knocking on death's door metaphor here - I felt it). While I was curled up in bed, aching everywhere imaginable, I thought of the Victorian poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Yeah, of course, I didn't really. I really thought, "Mommy! I need my mommy now with some hot chicken soup." (Actually it was more like hot porridge than chicken soup, but I'll cater to you white people out there, cuz I am culturally diverse and sensitive like that.)