i have been receiving so many emails from friends who are afraid to travel, or afraid to ride the subway, or afraid to go to shopping malls, etc.
now i would never want to be so cavalier as to dismiss someones fears, but i do think that it’s worth keeping things in perspective. it is safe to say, statistically speaking, that you and i have a better chance of dying from a bad fall in the shower than we do from dying of a terrorist attack. this is not to downplay the seriousness of what’s going on in the world, but i guess i’m trying to remind everyone that the world really hasn’t changed all that much for most of us. we still eat breakfast and listen to music and have sex and read books and complain about relatively inconsequential things. our global concern is justified, our fear is not. my heart goes out to the people whose lives have been seriously affected by the terrorist attacks.
i’m in no way trying to belittle their experiences or circumstances.
but the fear that so many people have does seem to be kind of irrational. i received an email from a friend in the midwest who was afraid to fly and afraid to go to her local shopping mall.
and, again, i don’t mean to be dismissive or cavalier, but it’s pretty safe to say that she has nothing to worry about. there are thousands of planes flying over the west right now, and 99.99999% of them will take off and land without incident. there are hundreds of millions of people in stores and office buildings right now, and 99.999999% of them will go home tonight and sleep peacefully. there might be a ..00000001% chance of something happening to one of us. but that .00000001% chance isn’t really a good reason to live a life of fear.
the old quote ‘we have nothing to fear but fear itself’ is in many ways more true now than it’s ever been. i hope and pray that there aren’t any more terrorist attacks on the west. and i hope and pray that we can all get on with our lives without being compromised by fear. and i believe that for most of us the ability to get on with our lives without being compromised by fear is, in large part, a concious choice.
thanks, and don’t be too afraid. please remember, our fear is their victory.
moby
