I am scared of a lot of things. Intimidating professors, small insects, talking out loud, kale smoothies, the sketchy Safeway down the street...you get it, a lot of things. A lot of insignificant and small things that I probably shouldn't let intimidate me. I mean how terrifying can a kale smoothie really be? Okay. Very terrifying, it's green and that's the color of monsters so obviously a kale smoothie is just a monster smoothie and how healthy can that be?

I digress.

You get the point though, I am scared of a lot of minuscule things that could or could not effect my daily life. Yet I will say, with absolute confidence, there is one thing that I refuse to ever be scared of. That is terrorism.

Now you are probably thinking one of two things.

1. You are absolutely insane, of course you should be afraid of terrorism and terrorists. It is so terrifying. There are evil people out there. How come you aren't freaking out? Freak out with me.

Or...

2. I mean yeah, because terrorism isn't really a threat to you so you should probably chill out.

This is a total generalization of course, but most people tend to lean towards one of those two sides. You either think terrorism is an imminent threat that we should all be panicking about or you just don't think it is really an issue. I have spoken to people on both sides.

I think a little differently than those two points though. Terrorism is a real threat in our world. So to think it will never effect you or just isn't out there is quite naïve. Though with the recent concentration of attacks occurring all around the world, Paris, Istanbul, Brussels, Baghdad, on our own turf in Orlando and most recently in Nice I find that more people are starting to wake up to the threat. No corner of the world seems to be left unaffected by these attacks on humanity which makes it terribly easy to be scared.

And a lot of people who are pushed to be frightened the most are travelers. It's only natural to worry about someone when they go abroad (or even fly somewhere domestically). Your loved one is living to go somewhere different and who knows what could happen? Americans abroad have been harmed before due to acts of terrorism and that is a really scary fact. Yet that is exactly why we cannot be scared and why I refuse to be scared.

*Finally gets to point*

I refuse to be scared of what could happen to me when I travel because traveling is what I love to do and if I let fear take away what I love to do then that's it. The bad guys have won. The evildoers have prevailed and I have let terrorism fulfill it's goal which is to strike fear in the hearts and minds of humanity.

I write this with my approaching trip abroad in mind. With the thought in my head that at this very moment I have close friends on trips around the world in places very near to where attacks have occurred. Of course I value you my own safety and my loved ones, that is why I always promote exercising caution in situations you may not be too confident in. Yet you can't let fear ever hold you completely back from pursuing what you really want. And if you want to travel the world, then that's what you should do. Because there will always be bad guys in the world.

So I am scared of small talk and the dentist and biology and all the most ridiculous, insignificant things you could think of. I may go out of my way to avoid all of those things because of my fear, but I am not scared of terrorism because I refuse to avoid the thing I love the most. Which is seeing the parts of the world I have never seen before.

I am not going to let the bad guys win.

I encourage you not to either.

So go out, see the world, make good decisions and say screw you to fear because there will always be bad guys in the world, but there won't always be this moment to prove the bad guys wrong.

My prayers and good vibes go out to the communities recently effected by terrorism around our world.