I have a suggestion: Take a deep breath and let it go slowly. Now, forget about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, socialized medicine, medical mandates, regulations on insurance companies, -government-managed -markets, high-risk pools, greater accountability.

Forget escalating health-care costs, pre-existing medical conditions, -employer-sponsored health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office, Medicaid, Medicare, Cobra, the -litigation challenging the health-insurance mandate, the donut hole, the Louisiana purchase, tort reform.

Forget all of it. Forget each and every name, each and every -organization, each and every political group, club, society and institute. Make your mind a blank, open the front door and look out at spring in the Sandhills.

Forget obesity, coronary artery bypass surgery, hypertension, -diabetes, CT scans, fear mongering, overheated rhetoric, the National Debt, the Small Business Health-Care Tax Credit and tanning salons.

Forget about Nancy Pelosi, Al Franken, President Karzai, Bart Stupak, Justice John Paul Stevens, Harry Reid, the Pope, Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Michael Steele, Howard Stern, Vladmir Putin, Neil Boortz, Rielle Hunter, Tom DeLay, John Edwards.

Forget Rod Blagojevich, Eliot Spitzer, Elin Nordegren, Jesse James, Dr. Phil, Jon Stewart, Tom Coburn, Karl Rove, Mark Foley, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Duke Cunningham, Ann Coulter, Tiger Woods, Ben Bernanke, Agatha Christie, Bonnie and Clyde, Eric Massa, Martina Navratilova, Keith Richards, Kim Tong-il, Tim Pawlenty.

Forget Richard Nixon, Howard Dean, Bob Ney, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Rob Reiner, Ralph Nader, Barbra Streisand, Alan Colmes, Ronald Reagan, Dennis Miller, G. Gordon Liddy, John Stossel, Bernard Goldberg, Brian Anderson, Howard Fineman, Peggy Noonan, Barney Frank and George Will.

Banish from your cerebrum the -following magazines, newspapers, and organizations: Blue Dogs, -conservative blogs, the Heritage Foundation, Fox News, MSNBC, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the tea parties, the Senate, -liberal blogs, the House, the White House, the Federal Reserve, Social Security, People for the American Way, MoveOn.Org, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Democratic National Committee.

Forget The New Republic, American Enterprise Institute, The Nation, The American Spectator, Newsweek, Chronicles magazine, Freedom Works, National Review, The Weekly Standard, CBS News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and US News and World Report.

The dogwoods (Cornus florida) have made a snowstorm of our streets, a blizzard of pink and white blossoms. Technically, the bright -portion of the "flower" are bracts, adapted leaves that encircle the -dogwood's real flower. If you relax for a few moments and take a close look, you'll see that the flowers are the greenish structures located between the -cluster of bracts.

Regardless of their scientific -partiality, their beauty is unmatched, and the Sandhills has more dogwoods than any place I know of. More important, the dogwood has no -political leanings. It doesn't care if you're a Democrat or Republican or a tea partier. It doesn't get angry about health-care reform or the -political one-upmanship or the quest for power and wealth. None of it -matters to the dogwood. It never complains. It's simply there.

And take a look at the azaleas, "the royalty of the garden." They are in the same genus as the rhododendron and open their blossoms during the first warm days of spring when the dogwoods are in their glory.

Native American azaleas include the flame azalea (R. calendulaceum) and the white azalea (R. viscosum), and they're everywhere in our yards and public places - pink and white garlands flowering in abundance and framed by the dogwoods' snowstorm.

So, yeah, take a deep breath, let it go slowly and behold the beauty that surrounds us. It won't be long before the flowering plants and trees have gone the way of the weeping cherry blossoms, and we'll be at each others' throats again.

Stephen Smith lives in Southern Pines. Contact him at travisses@hotmail.com.