Perseverance means to keep going and never give up, even when things are hard. The examples of perseverance are easy to find and hard to ignore. From the children at St. Jude's, to the Civil Rights activists in the 1950s-1970s, to the Jews during the Holocaust (poignantly portrayed in the upcoming WES play "Brundibar"), perseverance knows no ends or bounds. It never quits. The old saying "get knocked down 7 times, get up 8" is a way of telling you to persevere through anything life throws at you.

This video shows examples of perseverance and lack of perseverance. First, we see the future karate kid say that he took his jacket off and put it back on a 1000 times. Most of us would quit after the first hundred, if that many. It can be difficult to accept that we must do something over and over. But, finally, this young man lost sight of his perseverance and quit. Only at that point did he learn an important lesson about perseverance, when his teacher showed him that all of his work before had the purpose of teaching him.