CE DISCOURS TE LAISSERA SANS VOIX !

The first thing to do in your life is to believe deeply in your own dignity, in your own value and in your own person. Do not allow anyone to give you the impression that you are no one. If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving forward. I would like to ask you a few questions that should appear on your life plan. This is the most important and crucial period of your life. Because what you are doing now and what you decide at this age could well determine the direction your life will take. Every time a building is built, there is usually an architect who draws a plan. And this plan is used as a pattern, it is used as a guide, it is used as a model for those who have to build the building. And a building is not well built without a good and solid plan. Now each of you is building the structure of his life. And the question is to know if you have an appropriate, solid and healthy plan. And I would like to suggest some things that should appear on your life plan. The first thing to do in your life is to believe deeply in your own dignity, in your own value and in your own person. Do not allow anyone to give you the impression that you are no one. Always tell yourself that you have value. Always think that you are someone. Always think that your life has an ultimate meaning. Secondly, in your life plan, you must have as a basic principle the determination to reach excellence. In your various fields of activity, you will decide over the years what you will do in life, what will be the work of your life. And once you have discovered it, you will start doing it, and doing it well. And I tell you, my young friends, doors of opportunity will open to each of you. Doors that have not been opened to your mothers and fathers. And the big challenge you are faced with is to be ready to cross these doors when they open. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a conference in 1871 that 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 path beaten to its door. Which has not always been true, but it is becoming more and more. And so I encourage you to work hard, to burn the oil of midnight. I would tell you, do not give up school. And I understand all the reasons why we often give up school. But I encourage you, despite your critical economic situation, despite the situation you are forced to live in so often, in intolerable conditions, stay at school. And when you discover what you want to do in life, you will put yourself there, as if God Almighty was calling you at this precise moment in history to do it. Force yourself to do good work, and do this work so well that the dead, the living, and those who are not even born yet, could not do it better. If you feel like a street sweeper, sweep the streets like Michelangelo painted his paintings. Sweep the streets like Beethoven composed music. Sweep the streets like Léotienne Price sang in front of the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep the streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep the streets so well that all the others in the sky and the earth will have to take a break and say, here lived a great sweeper who did his job well. If you can't be a tree at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. But 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 just a path. If you can't be a sun, be a star. Because it is not by size that you win or fail. Be the best of what you are. And finally, in the plan of your life, you must commit to respect the eternal principles of beauty, love and justice. Do not allow anyone to pull you so low that you would end up hating life. Do not allow anyone to make you lose the respect you carry for yourself, to the point of no longer fighting for justice, whatever your age. You have the responsibility to seek to make your nation a better nation to live in. Life for none of us has been offered to us like a crystal. But we must continue to move forward. We must continue to move forward. If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving forward.