A Securus Locus
Monday, March 21, 2022, which is Spring Equinox, Persian New Year, and Highland City Club’s 17th anniversary, is a good time of the year to pause and reflect, as we celebrate having survived and hopefully thrived during yet another difficult year. I hope many of you can join us for our costumed “The Roaring Twenty Twenties” party, and see the movie, Finding Joe.
Spring’s arrival allows me to shed a few extra Winter pounds, and affords me the time to assess City Club's past progress and future potential.
I believe City Club is greater than the sum of its parts, which includes a beautiful place to socialize and work, eat good food and drink fine wine, surrounded by beautiful gardens, art, antiques, and companionship of friends and colleagues – in short, a community.
The secret sauce that binds all communities is trust, hence our crest, A Securus Locus. After all, a sense of safety is a prerequisite for interactions in a world full of contradictions and duality such as Yin and Yang, Male and Female, Light and Dark, Conservative and Liberal, Rich and Poor.
As I reflect on this decades-long journey to build an ideal community, I realize the most difficult part for me is not so much the continuing financial loss, as it is the pain of growing a thick skin. No matter how much I console myself that criticism or labels leveled at me and the Club should be “water off a duck’s back,” labels such as racist, sexist, elitist, dictatorial, narcissistic, self-serving, and pedantic can hurt, no matter how enlightened I regard myself, or how much I value the first amendment.
For some perspective on all this, I rely on the following paragraph in Benjamin Franklin’s letter to his sister, Jane Mecom, addressing her concerns about the harsh criticism he was subjected to in the American Newspapers:
“As to the Abuses I meet with, you must know I number them among my Honors. One can not behave so as to obtain the Esteem of the Wise and Good, without drawing on one’s self at the same time the Envy and Malice of the Foolish and Wicked, and the latter is Testimony of the former. The best Men have always had their Share of this Treatment, and the more of it in proportion to their different and greater degree of Merit. A Man has therefore some Reason to be asham’d of himself when he meets with none of it.”
Applying this advice to our situation, I believe despite the barrage of criticisms we are subjected to, we remain on the right track to building an ideal community based on trust, which includes being open to our critics, opponents, and the anarchists who vandalize our property and bash us online, whatever pain that may entail in the short term.
— Sina.
This Newsletter includes items reflecting the personal opinions of their respective authors. This forum is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas and welcomes alternative perspectives submitted in good faith. Neither the original submissions nor any counter-points represent the position of either City Club or Highland Institute. We invite you to engage in these discussions.