I see more courage and dignity in the eyes of those who have not everything, but nothing. I see men who wear many clothes, the finest money can offer and those that wear less. I see more character in the ones with less to wear and more worn on the strapping of their heart. I see a nation staring at itself in the mirror and the images cracks, it is not a pretty picture and yet it is not the only picture that can be. Men can write history which ever way they want, when they want, for who they want, but it is the poor man that will write the future. It is the men who say I demand change, not those who ask for it, a wise former slave who proclaimed himself Fredrick Douglass once wrote, “Power concedes nothing without demand”. I am not here for you to follow me on an endless journey, but to plant the seeds for you to begin your own. Money does not make might, money does not make one’s character and might does not make right. We have growing problems in this world we have been given. We have the tools to solve those problems. We have technology to solve many of those problems yet we resist. The resistance does not shoulder the burden on the backs of the wealthiest or strongest among us, but the weakest. People who are too poor to make sure food isn’t an issue this week, or next week or a year from now. People who are plagued with disease, rising costs, who shoulder the burden our society puts on them. Drugs, violence, food, shelter, these are not the problems of a man in a golden tower. But the problems of a man who is tasked with changing his reality.
We do not seek conflict on our own, but others order us toward that conflict. We do not lust for blood or gold by nature but are commanded to it by a culture of lust. Lust for silver, lust for more goods, things you don’t need, you don’t want and by the time you get it, it breaks down and ends up in the trash next week. Where are the saviors of this world? Are they the men who speak the words of injustice? Or the men who hear and see the injustice and commit themselves to ending it? This speech is not giving you a guide to ruling the world, instead, it says look inward. Be the person you want to admire, be the change you wish to see in the world. Don’t utter words of compassion, offer arms of embrace. Don’t give money to write problems off, act to solve them. IF You die tomorrow or five minutes from now, what will you say at your own funereally? Will you quote Caesar and say “I came, I saw, I conquered”. Or will you be bold solve the ills of the worlds before you die only to realize that in solving those problems you never really died? A man who cures cancer lives on forever. A man who cares for a small boy and makes a positive difference in that one child’s life lives forever. My advice to you is not to go out a fight in some war somewhere or to pick up a pitchfork and or to bath in the ease of common life. My advice is simply, Live Forever.
