Crying Won’t Help You. Praying Might Do You Some Good.

Did you cry when you heard that Micah Xavier Johnson, the Dallas shooter, had been killed by Dallas police with a drone-delivered bomb?

Would you cry if you heard that the Lavish Reynolds, Philandro Castile’s girl friend, had slit the throat of Jeronimo Yanez, the cop who killed Castile, in Yanez’s house as he slept? She and Yanez are the only ones in a place to know whether the shooting was justified. And Janez won’t be telling any story that doesn’t justify his actions. She probably knows that if she wants justice, she’s going to have to make it herself, though I doubt she’ll slit any throats.

Did you cry when you learned that U.N. trade sanctions on Iraq killed an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under 5?

Did you cry for the 12,000 people killed in Baghdad by the US military during 2003 to 2005, over 2,000 of them women and children?

Do you cry for the people that Obama selects to be killed with drone missiles, along with the innocents who are nearby at the time? Every. Single. Week.

How about the over 1,600 Americans who die every day from heart disease (610,000 / 365)?

Or did you get really angry about some of these deaths?

There’s a lot of death to cry about. There’s a lot of injustice to get mad about. There are a lot of news organizations who love to tell you about it. It sells page views, and page views sell advertisements.

All of these deaths are tragic. If you cry about every one, you will cry all day every day. If you get angry about every one, that anger will turn into hate.

I love to complain about these things on the internet. Read my Medium stories. Many would probably classify me as a gun nut. But humans don’t fit into nice little boxes. We are each unique.

I’ve decided that the only truly effective thing I can do is to meditate every day, working to eliminate the violence inside me. I am the only thing in this world I can really control, and even that is difficult.

Blessings.