My town lived through this in 2014, after the Michael Brown shooting. And again in 2017, in relation to the Jason Shockley case. Much of this upheaval isn’t really new. Yet, it’s different. Particularly coming on the heels of and piggybacking the destruction wreaked by COVID-19.

Things feel like they’ve spun out-of-control. We ping-pong from outrage to tragedy, feeding off the negativity. It all seems like such a wretched, complicated mess.

And yet, it’s not — it’s really not complicated at all:

• Don’t kill (absent self-defense or defense of others)
• Don’t abuse your authority
• Don’t mistreat people
• Don’t steal
• Don’t loot
• Don’t riot
• Don’t burn
• Don’t destroy
• Don’t deface
• Don’t cheat
• Don’t be selfish
• Don’t hate

Something vaguely familiar about that list, eh?

But it occurs to me, that’s a big list of “don’ts” — what one could view as a lot of negativity itself.

Really, it can be boiled down to one very simple “do”:

Love one another.