So my daughter is 5 (5 and 1/2 as she would be proud to tell you)…A couple of weekends ago we were walking up the steps to our home when she stopped dead in her tracks, looked down at the partially dead catnip plant sitting on our step and proclaimed that it was a very “hearty” plant. It made me stop dead in my tracks too – partly because I don’t think I had ever stopped and actually paid any attention to the plant, but more because of her choice of words – “hearty” hit me as a good, solid word. Hearty makes me think of comfort food. Food that has depth, warmth and bits of steam tumbling off the top. Food eaten best with family in a cozy atmosphere.

The plant is hearty to live (at least partially) through the cold stretch…but it also has heart. Not that different than the balance we all strive for in the current environment. We need to be hearty to live through the “cold stretch” but we also need to have heart. We need to remember each and every second that we are dealing with people’s lives – the lives of our employees, the lives of our clients, the lives of our subcontractors. The good news is that we aren’t truly in the line of fire such as those in our armed forces, firemen, policemen and other heroic endeavors. But we need to find the right balance of being “hearty” while also having “heart.”

On second thought, maybe the two are one in the same?

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