Positivity, "A Message to Garcia"

Hello everyone.  This Monday Morning Motivational Minute is about positivity and once again, I found my inspiration for this story within the pages of The 8^th Habit by Stephen Covey.

Just look around you. You never need to look very far to find negativity in the world.  People seem to carry it around with them everywhere they go, and ironically enough, it is the one thing no one ever seems to mind sharing.  People like this should have warning labels that read something like, “Warning – Listening to me can lead to serious reductions in general happiness and love of life.”

What I would like to do is share a short story that I believe very powerfully illustrates what it’s like if you take ownership of you own thoughts and your own life.  It is a true story called “A message to Garcia”, written by late American author Elbert Hubbard and first made into a silent movie in 1916 by Thomas Edison Inc. Yes, that was a motion picture production company owned by none other than the great inventor himself, Thomas Edison.

It reads,

“When war broke out between Spain and the United Stated at the turn of the century, President McKinley needed to get a message quickly to a Cuban revolutionary known as Garcia.  He was hiding somewhere on the island of Cuba out of reach of mail or telegraph and nobody seemed to know how to reach him.  But someone suggested that if anybody could do it, it would be an officer named Rowan.

 

When McKinley gave the letter to officer Rowan in Washington, D.C., the officer didn’t ask, “Where is he at? How do I get there? What do you want me to do when I’m there? How will I get back?”  He just took the message and figured out how to get to Garcia.  He took a train to New York. A ship to Jamaica. Broke the Spanish blockade to get to Cuba in a sailboat. Then wild carriage rides, marching and riding through the Cuban jungle.  Nine days of traveling later, Rowan got the message to Garcia at nine in the morning.  That same afternoon at five, he started his return journey to the United States.”

Mr. Hubbard comments further upon this story by writing,

“My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the boss is away as well as when he is at home,… the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing ought else but deliver it…Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals.  Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go.  He is wanted in every city, town and village – in every office, shop, store and factory.  The world cries out for such: he is needed, and needed badly.

Be like officer Rowan, be inspired and have a great day.