They say a man can live a month without food, and a week without water, but not a day without hope. 

We grow up full of hope and idealism, and then slowly start letting go, giving up, and compromising our dreams. In the past, I have written about Viktor Frankl’s three-year survival ordeal in multiple hellish concentration camps; Nelson Mandela, who endured 27 years of imprisonment, much of it in solitary confinement; Moses, who wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years looking for the Promised Land. 

Without tenacity and grit, talent is nothing more than unmet potential. Or, as Thomas Edison put it, genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

As a Stoic, I often think about these and other historical heroes such as the great Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who dealt with a combination of war, famine, and the Antonine Plague; Lincoln and the Civil War he fought to free slaves and keep our country together; and Golda Myer’s founding of the State of Israel, and nearly losing it during the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

Upon reflection on the immense hardships these leaders endured with such grace, I can’t help but wonder about the courage and fortitude they exhibited to overcome adversity without surrendering to the temptation of, say, Frankl to simply throw himself against the high voltage electric fence, or Mandela to hang himself with a bedsheet, or for Golda Myer to resort to the use of a nuclear bomb.  

One benefit of aging is the ability to look back and see how and why we have continued to stay the course, regardless of the cost. Two things I am most proud of are my lifelong personal relationship, and my 45-year dream of turning Highland into a true community center.

The Highland Dream has come a long way but is nowhere near its potential. Staying the course might be generational or societal. Often, the journey itself is the destination.

— Sina.