Daily Gratitude: Wow. I always thought Colin Powell was brilliant. And even if he never said anything other than this quote, it would be enough. How often do we get tied up in the mixture of fact and emotion? That’s like taking a healthy meal and then adding all the processed foods that are quick and easy to use. How healthy is the result? One of the hardest, yet most useful things we can learn how to do is remove emotion (our ego) from our arguments. I am working on that but have a really long way to go. But if we can remove the strong emotions, then we have a better chance of really understanding what the problem is and what can rationally be done about it. We need people who could do that in our country but right now it seems to be being run simply by emotion -no matter which side you’re on. And that right there is a big part of the issue- we have picked sides. Like a buffet or like a bunch of schoolyard kids picking a basketball team. Why can’t we all come together? This is not a political post but an attempt to get us to look at what “we” (each of us) have at stake in everything we feel passionate about. I could just as easily be writing about the Yankees given how passionate most baseball fans are – you know “my team is better than your team”. Key words here – “my” and “your”. That’s the ego being attached to our arguments. Try to spot this in your everyday thoughts and conversations and see what you can do about it.