What Is Your Life's Blueprint?
Six months before he was assassinated, King spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.
I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life's 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 of 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 your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they open....
And when you discover what you will be in your 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 streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep 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 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, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.
— From the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Final thoughts:
I believe that this speech made by Martin Luther King Jr. is important because it talks about your life's blueprint. You're at an age where you should be thinking about your future. This speech makes you think about your future plans and the different opportunities that we now have.
Extra Credit Questions - you may answer on the blog or hand me your answers on looseleaf on Tuesday. Extra credit will be given on how completely you answer the following questions:
1. After reading the speech "What's your life's blueprint?" by Martin Luther King Jr., what is your life blueprint??
2. How has this speech affected you or your future plans?
3. What are your final thoughts about these speech?
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