There's a lot of scary stuff happening in the world today. With the attacks on Europe and the upcoming American election, the uncertainty is growing way too quickly. However, even in the midst of what is a very broken world, there is still hope. Hope for change, hope for improvement, hope for reconciliation. I am not trying to deny the fact there are some very real reasons to be afraid of what our world has come to, but I am trying to say that there are way more reasons to live fearlessly.
We were given this world and these lives for a reason. It's time to put the fear aside, and embrace what we are really meant to do. This is much easier said than done, though. It's much easier to stay wrapped up in our comfort zones and ignore the scary in the world. Even though ignoring the scary may seem like the best way to live outside of fear, it's not. We have to confront the things that scare us. We have to experience them to learn how to beat them. There are scary things that happen every day. People are killed, people die of hunger, people are living in poverty. The future is not secure. But I'm not afraid. And you shouldn't be either.
I spent the last three and a half months of 2015 in Europe. I was in London and had friends in Paris the weekend of the recent attacks. This made the threat of terrorism very real to me. Much more real than it has ever been. Even though I was around when the Twin Towers were attacked, I was too young to understand the implications of that. That was not the case in Paris. I was very aware of the fact that my roommate and friends were in downtown Paris when the bombs went off. I was very aware of the threat of terrorism when I was surrounded by men with machine guns in Rome. Terrorism is real, and it's really scary. But the people who do these scary things are people just like you and me. They live in the same broken world. They need love. They need help. They need to know that even though they have the power of inflicting fear, they do not have the power to stop us from living our lives. They only win if we let them win.
The uncertainty in the world is always going to be there. We can't predict the future, and it's probably better that way. Tomorrow has enough trouble of its own. If we are able to look past the scary and embrace this broken world, we have the capability to change things. We have the capacity to live and love fearlessly. There will always be plenty of things to be scared of, but if we let those things keep us from living our lives, then we let the scary win. The scary should never win. There are too many beautiful things about this life for that. Embrace the beautiful and overcome the scary.
