Do not declare your victory. Declare your purpose.
Posted by Billy Shore on Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Last week I had the opportunity to connect with our supporters in Los Angeles, including Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who I had long looked forward to getting to know better.
The Mayor has a compelling personal story having begun as a civil rights and labor organizer, run for the California Assembly, ascended to Speaker, and on his second try was elected Los Angeles’s first Latino Mayor since 1872.
At one point when it was just the two of us I asked when he first started thinking about running for office. He recounted the ups and downs of being a political outsider. When he’d finally won as mayor he remembered what his mother, who died in 1991, would have said if she’d been alive: “Do not declare your victory tonight. Declare your purpose.”
Those words have echoed in my mind since I heard them. The mayor left me with some wisdom. “Do not declare your victory. Declare your purpose.”
I think these words resonated because they underscored what we have learned this past year at Share Our Strength, especially since sharpening our focus on ending childhood hunger. Above all else, it is our purpose that inspires. We must not let the work become about us, our trials and tribulations, even our successes and failures, all of which is transitory.
What counts, and what lasts, for us as individuals and for Share Our Strength as an organization, is our purpose.
August 3, 2010 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: letters, no kid hungry, state partnerships
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