We seem to always worry about the wrong things…

My mom worried about me hiking alone because I might get eaten by a bear. A woman in Yellowstone didn’t go on one of the hikes because she didn’t have bear spray. Yet, only 1 person per year is attacked by a bear in the park. And a ranger told us that people in the park are injured by car crashes more than anything else.

We worry about plane travel when car travel is much more dangerous.

As young people, we all worried about “ending up alone,” but we should probably be more concerned about ending up with the wrong person.

We worry about strangers attacking and raping and murdering us, but it is much more likely that a family member, friend, or acquaintance will do this to us. Pick the scarier situation: a teenage girl meets a 300 lb linebacker in a hotel elevator and agrees to go with him to his hotel room alone OR a teenage girl goes to her best friend’s house where they hang out with the friend’s boyfriend and his best friend. Our gut reactions are wrong because we’ve all been taught “stranger danger.” Rare occurrences are sensationalized and people are made to fear the wrong things. Our reluctance to talk to (and trust) strangers actually makes us more unsafe.

 

I’m worried about making it in NYC, but I’m more likely to regret it if I don’t try at all.

C and I embarked on this trip to ease our anxieties about the move. We were paralyzed with fear and depression, not knowing if we were making the right decision and not knowing how to fill our time while we waited in limbo. Now we don’t have time to think about any of that. We have to plan out our trip and our day-to-day. We have to plan meals and hikes and find campsites and hotels. We have to build campfires to cook on and find places to do laundry and shower. There is hardly any time for worrying.

When I was a kid, I never worried about anything and couldn’t understand why adults wasted their time worrying about things they couldn’t control. I want to live more like that.