It’s almost always best to sleep on it. If you have an important decision to make, a big purchase, a response to someone, or a blog post, always be patient enough to let it simmer.

Even though I’m a yoga teacher and I have a firm belief in a higher power, I am just as prone as anyone to anger. I could easily be a Twitter flamer since that is in my DNA. When I was an Army Drill Sergeant, we had to condition ourselves to react to everything in a split second. But when I finished that job, it was sometimes hard to turn it off. I could still be found honking if a driver didn’t react to a green light as fast as a Drag Racer at the starting light. I was even short with my wife. I was used to an immediate "YES DRILL SERGEANT" – "NO DRILL SERGEANT" so even a few seconds was too long. An "ummm let me think about it" wasn’t an option.

I feel I’m wiser now than I was a few years back. In the days of DOS and LISTSERVs where you could get into a special interest group and respond. I guess its like Reddit or something like that today. A topic would come up and you would debate your point. It was big during my college years because I could spew out all the things I was learning at the time. Oh garsh, I really thought I knew it all.

Do you remember the movie "War Games" with Matthew Broderick? As a kid, he tapped into a Def*nse server and started to play a game with WOPR, the big main frame computer that controlled n*clear m*ssile systems. He managed to almost start WW3. What stopped the computer was when he asked the computer to play Tic-Tac-Toe. It played over and over until it realized that there were no winners in that game. It was all about random chance.

So when I’d debate evolution or global warming or whatever, I started to realize I never changed anyone’s mind. It is a futile exercise to debate when our grounded beliefs are all that matters in life. And, for the most part, we rarely change people’s minds. Its true of politics as well. Winning isn’t an option. Its a war of attrition.

I suppose I still try to influence others. But its useless to push someone who’s heels are dug in. There is no way you can change people’s feelings about something.

People still try. If you look at Twitter wars, comments on news posts, or posts on Facebook, you realize people don’t change. If you stand up for something, there’s always a crowd waiting to take you down. So it doesn’t make sense to fight a social media fight anymore. You can’t possibly win.

So, there reason I’m writing this is that I had two blog posts sitting in draft form. Things have come up in society that I decided I’d say something about. But after I slept on it a few nights, I know it would have been useless and ineffective to post what I had written. Common sense prevails when you sleep on it.