Daily Leadership Thought #130 – We Continue to Persevere!
Sometimes, you just have to persevere until you accomplish your objective.
I’ve had this plaque hanging in my office for many years now with the title “Perseverance,” and it uses the life of Abraham Lincoln as a model. It’s mind-boggling how many failures and obstacles he had to overcome in his personal and professional life. Reading the examples provided on the plaque makes me feel depressed for Abraham Lincoln, and many more examples are not even mentioned. Most people would have given up or lowered their expectations. Lincoln kept pushing forward and believing in himself and the higher purpose of his calling and talents. He was willing to risk war and its devastating consequences (and setbacks) to do what he felt would be the right thing for this country. We should all be eternally grateful for his ability to persevere.
Today, we got the news that Osama Bin Laden has been killed and is no longer a personal threat to the world. Justice has been served, and hopefully, our leaders will keep forging ahead and doing what is right to protect our country and its allies from senseless violence and terrorism. I’m sure it has been and will continue to be a difficult and frustrating job for those responsible for our homeland security. It’s been a long time since 9/11.
I have no doubt that President George W. Bush wanted to achieve this outcome and worked tirelessly to do so. He could have given up many times, but did not. This responsibility fell to President Obama, who had to demonstrate a similar level of patience and resolve in numerous ways. Like his predecessor, he came under intense pressure and scrutiny from others for not being initially successful. Fortunately for all of us, neither leader nor their staff, nor most importantly, the intelligence professionals and brave soldiers on the ground, gave up; they persevered and got the job done.
Being President of the United States of America must be a very heady job. However, despite the trappings of position, power, and influence, it must also be a very lonely role as well. As should be the case in a free country, everyone has the right to criticize your every move with limited or sometimes no real understanding of the facts at hand. There are countless media blowhards with minimal leadership experience who fancy themselves as experts on what you should or should not be doing. They also receive substantial compensation for stirring up controversies. The physical and emotional pressures of the presidency are obviously draining; consider the before-and-after pictures of every modern president. We should all be thankful they chose to do the necessary work and risk many things, including their own personal well-being, to assume the mantle of responsibility. They persevere on difficult matters, so we don’t have to.
I hope that today we can all just be appreciative citizens. It would be nice if we could briefly put aside our differing individual philosophies and opinions to celebrate the efforts and perseverance of many of our fellow citizens, including some who risked their lives to bring Bin Laden to justice. Our country is not without its flaws, nor are our leaders. We do make mistakes and sometimes struggle with living up to our own democratic principles and values. Dialogue around how we are doing in this regard should be an ongoing and vigorous debate. However, this mindset should also be balanced against the historical facts of how we can rally together, make significant sacrifices, persevere, and accomplish remarkable things as individuals and as a country. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” A nation that remains united in the face of adversity, actively listens to one another, fosters trust, relies on one another, and strives to uphold its shared principles and values will endure, particularly during challenging times.
We all must believe and trust that we can “…weather any storm and meet any challenge,” otherwise our fragile democratic experiment may be in jeopardy.
