Traveling alone isn’t as scary as your mom says it is

“I’ve got to fly or fall on my own.”

This is what I said to my mom after telling her I wanted to travel around the world by myself. As you can imagine, she wasn’t pleased. Moms are the greatest people in the world and by nature they are protective because they gave you life and so of course they want to protect it. They didn’t spend 9months baking you in their womb to just give birth to you and let you ruin your life with terrible decisions! Their protectiveness comes from love and we all love our mamas.

Almost everyday for three months my mom would send me updates from the US Embassies of the countries I was planning to visit. Not only that but also, airline articles, death notices, medical warnings, travel bans, criminal reports, and every kind of hazardous travel warning short of showing up at my apartment and painting on my car in bright red the words, “DON’T GO YOU’LL DIE!” She even cried one night because I had gotten my ear pierced again without telling her and she was convinced that because I was going to Africa with an open wound (my ear piercing), I was going to get an infection and my ear was going to rot off which would cause the infection to go to my brain and kill me, all because I got my ear pierced three months before I was suppose to leave for Mozambique. She now says that she was kidding, but mom I know the truth. You love me and don’t want anything to happen to me. Including a rotten ear and infected brain.

When I tell someone that I travel the world as a 20 something girl alone, 90% of their reactions are “that’s so dangerous”, “you' must be crazy"“, “just please be careful and come back in one piece!” At first I was slightly hurt by these statements, taking them to mean that they thought I couldn’t handle it or do it on my own, that that meant they thought I wasn’t good enough, smart enough, to be capable of traveling anywhere on my own. I now realize that these comments aren’t a reflection of me and my capabilities, but made out of two things. One, love and care for another persons wellbeing and survival. Two, fear and the known capabilities of that persons comfort zone of things they have never done themselves.

The world can be a scary and very dangerous place, theres no getting around that. Terrible things happen all over the world every single day to people who don’t deserve them in the slightest. The media tells stories of kidnappings, murders, the sex trade, and terrorist groups on every new outlet daily. Our world is full of real life demons that go bump in the night and its amazing that we even leave our houses with as many terrible things that happen.

The world is scary and the media makes it seem even worse. Ive found that most of the time its the media that blows things way out of proportion and doesn’t truly represent what is happening in a country when it reports only one or two cases of a bad event. It reflects negatively on the entire country associating in our brains unconsciously into a pattern like this: something bad happened in Greece, so Greece is bad, therefore I shouldn’t go to Greece or the same bad thing might happen to me. Our brains are wired to remember the bad so as to protect itself for the next time, an example is you accidentally touch the stove top with your hand, it hurt, so you consciously remember to not touch the stove top because it hurt your hand for the rest of your life. Stove top equals bad, travel equals danger.

But we do leave our houses, and we do go outside, and do we do continue to go to the movie theater no matter how many mass shootings happen. We do this because we are humans who still believe in the good of the world and we still will do what we want to do. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Egypt or Walmart, something bad could still happen to you. Bad things are happening everywhere, especially in America, but that doesn’t stop us from living our lives. Just like it should stop us from traveling and seeing the world.

If you travel smart, go prepared, and don’t do things you think could harm you, odds are you’re gonna be alright, no matter where you are in the world. Now thats not to say bad things wont happen to you when you travel, because part of the beauty of traveling is the low points and the crazy unpredictable and difficult things that happen. But when those things do happen, because they will, you are given an opportunity to grow as a person and learn how to handle life a little better than you did before. It’s all about the choices you make, you can either given into the fear and go home or accept the challenge and keep pushing through this thing called life.

The entire fear our moms, families and friends have for traveling is an unconsciously wired fear about safety, and that fear is based upon the unknown and the unknown predictably of other people and their actions produced by the repetitive news of terrible events . We fear what we don’t know, we worry about the future, we stress about things that are out of our control. It’s apart of who we are as humans and it’s because we care so much that we do. Now that I’ve traveled so much my mom sends me fewer Embassy updates and has become my biggest fan, though I know she still worries to death over everywhere I go, I know its because she loves me. And before you ask, no I didn’t get an infection in my brain from my ear piercing in Africa.

We have to break free of that fear and allow ourselves to jump head first into the unknown of life to truly see it and experience it to the fullest, no matter if it’s traveling the world or in your own backyard. It’s called facing your fears. If we allow ourselves to be held back by the fear of the unknown, then how will be do anything at all?

Travel is difficult, but its not as scary as your mom thinks it is.