opinion@dailylobo.com
I’ve always been afraid of my neighbor’s dog. It barks like a dragon, it stares at me like I’m prey, and whenever it’s off its leash it hunts me down. I’d rather not meet that crazy canine again, but because my brother steals our car every day it’s inevitable for me to have my daily rendezvous with it during my morning promenade to school.
I cross to the opposite side of the street whenever I approach my cursed neighbor’s house, to get as far away from it as possible. But my strategy seldom works: most of the time the dog still notices me, so I run to school yet again.
I always forget that dogs can smell fear.
April 15 was one of the days my strategy worked. I reached school calmly, attended all my classes on time and got pretty bored.
Everything was normal until the afternoon approached.
I was researching Amy Adams out of boredom during one of my classes when I received a Facebook message from a friend. He told me to check the news because, apparently, there was some kind of explosion in Boston that day.
We journalists are skeptics. I hesitated to care at first, thinking that things like this happen everywhere all the time.
But that was only until I followed my friend’s command and checked the news. Two explosions, two dead, 30 people severely injured. Wait, 50.
No, 70.
100.
It kept climbing. I went to view live updates of the tragedy online. The reporters were talking about limbs flying, about blood flowing everywhere.
“Yeah,” I thought. “This is a big deal.”
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I was worried, heartbroken. I lived in Massachusetts last year, and my brain was immediately filled with anxiety about my friends and acquaintances in the area. I checked their Facebook pages one by one. Luckily, All of them were OK.
But two of my friends were near the scene of the explosion in the marathon. One — an editor for a runner’s magazine in Boston — said her entire building, which is blocks away from the scene, was in total lockdown until the afternoon.
The other, who attended the marathon, claimed he was standing at the site of the explosion hours before it happened. He was fortunate to have finished the race quickly and left before chaos started.
According to their Facebook pages, they both got home safely. But they both said they were scared.
And it’s not hard to see why. Nobody saw this coming. People died, children lost parents, friends lost friends and some lost appendages. The nation mourned, and the president gave a televised speech about feeling sorry and moving forward. It was kind of like 9/11.
Events like this make it easy for people to live in fear. People kill people on a daily basis with no particular reason in mind. No organization has taken responsibility for the recent explosions.
It’s just as possible that the perpetrators are terrorists with affiliations as they were independent, bored, psychotic teenagers who wanted to blast something just because.
People can be pretty unpredictable; and often, unpredictability is scary.
It’s a sad fact that fear seems common in today’s society. I am afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of worms, leeches, centipedes or any creature of that form. I’m afraid of huge dogs that could devour me whole. I’m afraid of samurai swords, and samurais for that matter. And I’m afraid that al-Qaida might get lost in the desert on its way to Los Angeles and end up bombing Albuquerque.
I once thought fear was a controllable state of mind. I don’t know why I forgot that.
People should realize that nobody would have achieved anything if they let fear take control. Quentin Tarantino would not be famous if he were afraid of blood. Neil Armstrong wouldn’t have been the first man on the moon if he were afraid of aliens.
The easiest way for someone to be a victim is for them to think and to act like one, so no matter how fearsome the world may be, we should all learn not to live in fear. Yes, many people die every day, but many more are born at the same time. However many people say that the end of the world is near, hope will always exist. Except when Twinkies are totally discontinued.
No, I kid.
Anyway, this might be a hard time for many people, but we should all just hang in there and try to carry on. However hard it is, let’s try not to live in fear anymore.
On Wednesday, I saw the demon dog on my way home. It stood up at the first sight of me, and though it was on a leash — for a second, I thought of crossing the street.
I didn’t. The dog barked, but I continued walking.
“You might scare me, but you won’t keep me from carrying on,” I thought. “Bitch.”
I gave it the middle finger, smiled and returned to my voyage home.
