I love this phrase; it's pregnant with potential and the ultimate definition of Yin and Yang.

My yoga and meditation teacher used to tell me “if you want to be born again, you must be willing to die first.”

But no matter how many times I go through the cycles of death and rebirth, gain and loss, boom and bust, I never get used to the brutality of the destruction, pain, heartache and suffering it entails. At the intellectual level, we all know the forest fire burns the deadwood and creates nutrition and light for the next generation of trees, but if you have ever gotten close to a forest fire, you know how scary it is.

Thomas Jefferson said, we need a good revolution every twenty years to keep the American ideal alive. It takes a pandemic, war, revolution or famine to destroy the old, the stale and the congealed, giving birth to new ideas and ways of doing things.

Our country is going through a major change. Either the Coronavirus never left or is coming back stronger than before. There are race riots and looting in the streets, and we haven’t even held our political conventions. The economy is on a sugar-high of multi-trillion dollar spending and could crash anytime. There is great wealth disparity in the land, and our kids are being taught to avoid trigger words instead of learning to listen and debate. In short, the system is due for a reboot, but that does not soften the pain of destruction.

It is said “if you are on the path and the path is easy, you are on the wrong path." A hinge in history is usually loaded and slams shut instead of closing gently. City Club's strategy is to hope for the best and plan for the worst. Churchill, who knew a thing or two about adversity, said “when going through hell, keep on going.” We have trouble ahead, but let’s deal with it with grace and remember we are going through a natural cycle of creative destruction.