When I face the problem, I always look at the worst possible scenario to brace myself for what could happen. Call me paranoid, but I always want to know what I'm getting myself into and the parameters behind what I'm doing. I thought that this constant nagging would go away when I was on vacation, but I was wrong, I was in Europe for two weeks; during that time, the Nice attack happened and the Munich attack happened. I wasn’t near any of the attack locations, but being in Europe made it just that more impactful. Our world is being terrorized and unfortunately, people are feeling at odds with certain places within the world. But I’m here to tell you we can’t let them win. Because even being slightly afraid makes them winners already.

I was in the beautiful Italian countryside for a week before going to Spain and France. I was off the border of France when the Nice attack happened. I remember watching the BBC news anxiously with my family, wondering why this was happening to the world. We had the family discussion about whether we should even go to France despite what happened just hours before. When discussing our other options, my dad pointed out that we should still go. After a second to think about it, I realized he was right. Since all of the things that have been happening around the world, fear is the instant answer. They want us to be scared of them. But we can’t.

So we went to Marseille and had an amazing time, but I was always thinking about what could have happened. It could have been where we were. It could have been my family that was caught. All of these thoughts were running through my head, but then I remembered an article that I read. It mentioned how people still have to travel and go around the world. And I thought about the situation on the domestic front. With all of this talk about black lives matter and blue lives matter building a wall and not letting any immigrants in, it honestly makes my head spin. For every bad thing that goes on, of course we can definitely see a solution for it. It just might not be the answer to the problem.

I’m here to say that our me, you or our families, our country can no longer run away from our problems. This past week and this upcoming one are extremely important because it officially seals Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the nominees, and one of them will be president come November. Everyone is scared of something, and like the attacks that have been happening, if we continue to be scared of the future, the future will never change.

So if you’re scared of the small things like what’s going to happen this week’s episode of The Bachelorette, or the bigger things like who’s going to be the next president of the United States or when is ISIS going to claim responsibility for another attack, we have to remember that fear holds us back from greatness. It’s okay to be afraid, but we cannot let that stop us from doing the bigger things in life.