“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 be in your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you fell that you are nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance. Now that means that you should not be ashamed of your color… Don’t be ashamed of your color. Don’t be ashamed of your biological features. Somehow you must be able to say in your own life and really believe it, ‘I am black but beautiful’ and believe it in your heart.

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. And once you discover what it will be, set out to do it, and to do it well.

And I say to you, my young friends that doors are opening to each of you. Doors of opportunities are opening to each of you that were not open to your mothers and to your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open...

And when you discover what you are going to be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. And just don’t just set out to do a good ‘negro’ job… Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr. “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?” speech at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967

When you watch any speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. you feel the urgency of the moment he was living in. There was simply no time to waste. He said it as a preface of this speech in Philadelphia, speaking to young students who were at the beginning of their own journey to becoming. I wonder how things turned out for those students? How many heard the call and rose up to personal excellence? How many of us, hearing it today, will aim higher in our own pursuit?

The thing is, we know how MLK’s story ended, just six months after this speech. Yet he lives on, transcending life itself to reverberate and resonate with generations long after the generation of middle school kids who listened to him speak that day. Precisely because he’d reached higher, arrived at the pulpit and turned to guide those who would follow.

The world has turned more cynical once again, pushing against the momentum of change. There is an ebb and flow to progress, like a pendulum swinging. One side gains momentum, the other side resists and pushes back. Populism is predictable in this way, and generally requires the right voices to stand out in the noise and be the tipping point. For every autocratic bully rallying the crowd one way, there’s a voice calling to push back towards progressivism and human dignity. One step forward, two steps back for some period of time, then two steps forward, one back soon thereafter. Humanity’s history writes itself one swing at a time.

Knowing this, we must continue to rise—not just in personal excellence, but generational excellence. There’s too much at stake in the world to settle for the narrative of the miserable. The swing towards autocracy isn’t a given, it’s merely a push. We can surely push back for progress. The scales can be tipped when we rise to the moment.