I had a sad realization of the world we live in recently. Last week, UTSA held a mile run challenge at the recreational center. When I saw it going on, I remembered I saw a poster advertising the event with my good friend Raymond a couple of days before the event. I am not too sure how it happened but those persuasive rec center employees managed to talk me into doing it; so I did it. I thought it was pretty humorous at how I just participated in this event with no intentions to do so in the first place. Afterwards, when I was drenched in sweat, I thought I would inform my friend Raymond that I randomly just did the mile run challenge; just to get a couple laughs out of this; my realization occurred at the conclusion of my phone call with him.

I was holding off until the last second to actually tell Raymond what I had called him for (because I am dramatic like that). It was your typical dude conversation:

"Hey man, guess what I just did?"

"What?"

"I don't know how or why or how ... but these workers talked me into doing the mile run challenge haha."

After the short exchange of words Raymond had told me that I scared him when I was saying I did not know how this happen, without actually telling him what happened yet (again, because I am dramatic like that). He had told me that he thought I was going to say there was a shooting at the school or something worse happened. I quickly corrected him and ended the phone call.

At first, I thought he was silly to think such a thing. But then I actually started to really think about it. I remembered the campus carry law went into affect on August 1st and I realized that the fear of something happening, like a shooting, is very real. During the first week of the school, the syllabus week, for the first time ever teachers had to go over sections in the syllabus about gun exclusion zones. Witnessing that made it all surreal to me. This is the world we live in now. We are now in a day and age where fear of danger is not far from us, it is right in our backyard.

The sad truth about the world we now live in is that to a certain extent we all live in fear. Fear of God, fear of danger, fear of death, fear of growing up, fear of being alone, fear of the future, etc. Either big or small, we all feel it.