MLK's words of inspiration are still a lesson for today

   On October 26, 1967, six months before he was slain, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this address to the students at Barratt JHS in Philadelphia...

   "I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life's blueprint? Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws the blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.
   Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.
   I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one in your life's blueprint should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.
   Secondly in your life's blueprint, you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life - what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.
   And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to you - doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and fathers - and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors when they open. 
   Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mouse trap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." This hasn't always been true - but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don't drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of you economic plight, in spite of the situation that you're forced to live in - stay in school.
   And when you discover what you will be in life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.
   If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep the streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep the streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep the streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep the streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say; Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.
   Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by the size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Imagine being in the audience when that speech was made? The impact it would have had on you! I did not read that speech until later in life, but was somehow taught, and followed the principles behind it. I have always tried, and sometimes succeeded, to be the best at what I was doing. Either way, it's never too late to start.

Until next time - John La Selva