Fear & Inspiration

August 20, 2009

Not until I started considering and planning this trip did I notice how much people base their perceptions of reality on movies. I can't tell you how many people's first reaction about my trip was "Have you seen 'Taken' or 'Hostel'?" (And for the record, no, I haven't, and will not be seeing them before my trip!) It's amazing that people base their perception of reality off horror movies. A few others have referenced back to "Locked Up Abroad" with the mention of my trip-"I think it was a South American country..I'm not sure though."
One of my favorites was a family friend who was talking to my Mom on the phone. She says to my Mom "Tell her not to swim in the water." THE water?? What does that even mean! I of course questioned--well, the ocean? A lake? A river? What country? The entire continent of South America? The response was "Well...she doesn't know, she just saw a documentary."
I've also learned recently that no countries in South America are third-world, so people can drop that comment ("You're going to third world countries?!?")
Of course, the most popular "Is there a guy traveling with you?"
I have really realized what fearful people we are, and how most of it is based off of everything but fact. This goes back to my criminal justice education in a way. Most of us spend most of our time fearing becoming a victim at the hand of strangers..but most victimization is done by people we know. Of course, how would we ever know that based on the media? Shows how we base our reality on a few, isolated incidences, then turn that into an entire continent being dangerous.
Anyways! The moral of the story is...fear of the unknown is very much alive in our culture and we should keep that in mind when making decisions in our lives! :)

Inspiration: It's pretty cool how one person's travel experiences can inspire others. I would say that two individuals definitely inspired me to do this journey. Mike Z was the person who originally planted the idea in my head, due to his travels around the world in Asia, South Africa, Australia, etc. As I got to know him, I saw and learned how much his travels affected his life. More recently, a friend from UD, Meg, recently returned from backpacking Southeast Asia, Figi, Australia, New Zealand. Seeing her pictures and activity through facebook made me realize: 'There is no reason I can't do something like this."

Probably one of the coolest things that has come out of my trip thus far is a friend who mentioned in an email that partially due to inspiration from my trip, she decided to book a solo trip to a dude ranch that she had been wanting to do for a while. What a great feeling it was to hear that I had somehow inspired someone!! :)