I walked the Tunnel To Towers 5K this Sunday and a man I saw so moved me that this post jumps to the top of my queue.

I don’t know his name. He’s a soldier or marine who lost 3 limbs in one of our wars. He walked the 5K. With awe-inspiring perseverance, very slowly and followed by his wheel chair, which he did not need.

Watching him gave me goose bumps.

This unnamed warrior is a reminder of the value of perseverance. I think it’s vastly underrated.

Perseverance should be part of every job description and performance review. It belongs in marriage vows and oaths of office, from soldier to civil servant to supreme commander-in-chief.

It is critical if you work in or around nonprofits. Generally, staffing is lean; regulation is thick; oversight is uninformed; and bureaucracy is maddening, even absurd. Yet the money must get raised; forms filed; overseers mollified; personalities assuaged; and the important work accomplished for the good of those you serve.

(I see no better realm in which perseverance must prevail, very often over logic and rationality, than my state charity registration work. That discussion is for another day.)

I wish you could have seen this man sweat and struggle at each short, tentative, unsteady step. You may have seen him on TV.

He is remarkable.

In his honor, persevere.