4 Critical Things to Remember After the Boston Bombings

If you are an American — or just have a morsel of humanity — Monday’s news out of Boston probably made you feel a bevy of emotions and entertain a wide-range of thoughts. Just check out your Facebook wall — you’ll probably find anger, blame, hatred, sadness, and fear all at once, mixed with a yearning to act, or even a desire for blood.

I’m no expert, but I imagine those feelings are pretty normal. Yet while we all hold our loved ones a little closer tonight, we would all benefit from keeping these 4 things in mind instead:

1. Whatever the investigation yields, making even a single rash, emotional decision about how to move forward is not the right call.  The best thing we can do right now is resist the urge to do something just because doing something will make us feel a little bit better. Now is not a time to, say, invade a country, or pass a massive, game-changing piece of legislation.

2. Too many Americans have gotten used to the idea that our anti-terror efforts can be invincible, but that's not possible. We need to accept that stuff like this is probably going to happen from time to time — and that DOES NOT mean that we do not have the right policies in place or the right people implementing them.

3. Don't take out your anger on Arab Muslims — most are peaceful people just like everyone else. With what we know right now, the terrorist could just as easily be the next Timothy McVeigh as the next Osama bin Laden. And even if this was an Al-Qaeda operation, we still should not take it out on all Muslims — just as Christians don’t deserve to be identified with extremists in their ranks that bomb abortion clinics, Muslims don’t deserve to be identified with Al-Qaeda.

4. Go out and live your life.  Go to Boston. Fly there.  Run in the next big marathon. Show whoever did this that their insanity will never determine our reality. Don't let whoever did this win.