Guidelines 2
The community as a whole must be forgiving of personal choices and nature.
Last night I watched the video "Sweet Home Alabama". I am glad that I saw it on video, but I am also glad that I did not spend the money to see it in the theater. It did have some very good parts though. In the movie the Heroine is a young woman that makes it big in the big city, and then has to go back to her home town to take care of some unfinished business. At one point she goes out to a local honky-tonk, and gets drunk. She then proceeds to insult or belittle all of the people she has known since childhood.
Once she sobers up she realizes what a jerk she has been, she goes around apologizing, and making amends. The thing is the everybody is accepting of her humanity, and eventually all is forgiven if not forgotten.
I think that this is a good illustration of what it takes to make it in a small community. It is not so much "go long to get along" it is more of a "let it go to get along" as the old Cat Stevens song, Home goes, "Nobody has to hide 'cuse everyone already knows." In a small community there are few secrets, but we must be tolerant of others humanity.