Step Up for Scholars 2022: Richard Marcantonio

Welcome to Step Up for Scholars, the second event in the 2022 Pat’s Run Challenge Series! We’re celebrating all 14 classes of Tillman Scholars over the next 14 days. Each day, we’ll share a story from one of our scholars to inspire you to push a little harder tomorrow in your step challenge. Today, we bring you 2015 Tillman Scholar Richard Marcantonio shares a message of tenacity and how taking just one more step can make a huge impact.. Check out Richard here:

Mastery, greatness, eureka moments, or the ahas of our lives are not instances, they are step-by-step processes brought about by grit, tenacity, and fortitude. We all fail, we all fear failure; it’s a nod to use platitude, but success is truly the result of a string of failures. Taking that step, moving up and forward, each moment, each evolution, each day over each obstacle is a step away from failure and towards success. 

I feel, every day, in a thing that I am allegedly an expert in: building a sustainable more peaceful world through regenerative environmental management and environmental peace building. I’m not making excuses, but it’s tough work all the more reason to take the next step as my marine brother Travis Mannion used to say “If not me, then who?” For me that one step is one more person, one more community, or one more institution at a time to change to achieve my mission. 

If you’re stepping up for Pat, then you’re listening to that voice right that said, “Somewhere inside we hear a voice, it leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become, but it is up to us whether or not to follow.” Those are Pat’s words words about a phenomenon we all know so well and we all know we could use a little more listening in our world today. So listen to the voice, take the next step, embrace the failure to come, but that moves you that much closer to achieving your mission. And when you feel the inevitable pull of defeat, take one more step.

Want to join the challenge? It’s not too late! Register by Aug. 14 at StepUpforScholars.org and you’ll get a commemorative t-shirt and hat.