A Message to Garcia: Excellence

The essay, A Message to Garcia written by Elbert Hubbard talks about human's lack of hard work. This essay inspired and spoke to many people. It was reprinted as books that were 42 pages long. They sold 40 million copies in 37 languages and the essay was also made into two movies. A Message to Garcia is about an army officer Rowan, who was sent to give a message to Garcia, a war general for Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. Rowan was able to complete this task quickly and without any question. In this essay, Elbert Hubbard rants about how humans have so much potential but they choose to be lazy. Knowledge and knowledge about knowledge is the highest potential humans have that every other species does not. We have the ability to change the world, to create new things, and to allow us to do things only other species can do, such as fly. Humans have the ability to take initiative and Elbert Hubbard talks about the common rule of people being lazy and doing only what is good enough. This essay was and still is so powerful that the slang expression "take a message to Garcia" means to take initiative, which is still used in the military. We have so much potential, if we would just do what is right, even if we were not told.