Terror. Sadness. Fear. These emotions permeate everyday life now. It seems as if not even a month can go by without something horrific being reported on the news. It’s funny, really, when I compare how I look at the world now compared to how I viewed it as a child growing up in Southern California. As a child, everywhere I looked seemed like an opportunity for new adventures and fun times. Every individual I saw was another potential friend and the only limitation on anything was my own imagination. There was never a question of if I would ever see a friend or family member again, it was only a question of when.
I don’t even know when I started to see things differently. That childlike overoptimism slowly vanished, replaced with a cynical view of life, that only continued to fester within me as I grew older and observed the world under a microscope. What was once endless opportunities for adventures and fun times was replaced with only seeing opportunities for how I could be hurt or endangered.
The people that I used to see as potential friends suddenly became almost certain agents of danger. Will the next person I see attempt to rob me? Will I suddenly be stabbed by a total stranger simply because they are mentally unstable? Will the next visit to an airport, amusement park or simply a college classroom result in my last day on Earth?
The limitless bounds of my imagination have suddenly turned into a view that life is only about limitations. It seems like my potential is constrained by how smart I am, how wealthy I am, what connections I may have, whether or not my race will increase the diversity and any other number of limits. The hopefulness of childhood certainly seems to be replaced by what feels like to be the hard slap of reality. I used to hear all the time growing up, “The world is your oyster.” I guess I must be allergic to shellfish.
With this seeming to be reality now, it’s impossible to not be filled with fear, a fear so all-encompassing that it’s capable of crippling me. A fear that I will not be able to support a family. The fear that even if I can support a family, they would suddenly lose me to some deadly event or accident. The fear that even if I survive life, my family and friends will fall victim to the evil of this world, being ripped from life by some cruel happenstance. Everywhere I look now, I simply see fear.
Yet as different as life today feels to me, maybe it’s not so different in the grand scheme of time. Growing up in general is filled with fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of what is not in our control, and, maybe most of all, fear of what we actually do have in our control. Generations upon generations of people have gotten through life, continuing into the next era. If they can do it, so can I.
This fearful life I see before me now grants me the determination to make it change. I have the determination to not be crippled by the fear, but maybe to actually let that fear fuel me to change something, anything, so that someone else will not have to have that same fear. We all see fear, and it’s our responsibility to not let ourselves be controlled by it.
