But By All Means

Martin Luther King, Jr:
​
This is the most important and crucial period of your lives, for what you do now and what you decide now at this age may well determine which way your life shall go. And the question is whether you have a proper, solid, and sound blueprint. And I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your life’s blueprint.

Number one in your life’s blueprint should be a deep belief in your own dignity and your own worth and your own Somebody-ness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel like you are 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 a basic principle: the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days and years unfold what you will do in life, what your life’s work will be. And once you discover what it will be, set out to do it and do it well. Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or you fail, be the best of whatever you are.

Finally, in your life’s blueprint, must be a commitment to the eternal principles of beauty, love, justice. While life for none of us has been a crystal stair, we must keep moving, we must keep going. If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving.
 
See King's inspiring speech here:
https://youtu.be/Q9spMeeBPPY