Whenever there is a terrorist incident, international travel sees a decline. Longtime Journeys traveler Bill R. recently shared his thoughts about the common fears that can hold people back from taking that long dreamed-of trip, and why he continues to choose adventure travel despite these concerns.
I was thinking about why people are afraid to travel.
Life is full of risks (well, maybe?) and we all want to avoid them. But we are not good at judging real risk. We are not good at looking at the real (mathematical) chances of something (either good or bad) happening to us.
We eagerly buy a lottery ticket where my odds of winning are one in 250 million. The Law of Really Big Numbers says it ain’t gonna happen for you. It will happen for somebody, it just won’t be you. We don’t seem to understand that, and we line up to buy a ticket to reach into that enormous pile of money and pull out one ticket saying “Well, somebody has to win it” (no, in truth, nobody has to win it).
Every day we hop into our cars and head out on the roads. In the process, we Americans kill about 33,000 people each year, yet some still refuse to use a seat belt, because we are so convinced we won’t be a part of that statistic. If, by comparison, 1,000 people were killed in a foreign destination, we would hide under our beds, refusing to go there. Yet we’ll still keep our driver’s licenses valid and continue to drive, with a much higher chance of being killed on our own highways. It makes no sense! We are bad at judging real risks.
So let’s say the country I want to see has incidents of terrorism (we got ’em here too but I still don’t worry about going to the store). When the incident happens, what are my chances that:
So what is my real risk of something going wrong? To get that number you have to multiply the chance of each of these things happening: I have to be in the wrong country, in the wrong city, in the wrong location, at the wrong time, at exactly the wrong time. Multiply all these together and you get that proverbial “snowball’s chance” that it will be you. Certainly somebody will be there, it just won’t be you. Somebody will pick the right ticket out of that enormous pile of money — it just won’t be you.
On the other hand, if I don’t go, I am guaranteed to miss everything that country has to offer. I miss the experience of seeing things I can see nowhere else. I miss all the stories I would be able to tell my friends as we sit on the back porch and talk about our lives over the $10 bottle of wine I buy. I would miss meeting people who, like me, enjoy adventure and seeing places and people I can’t see here. For me, I would miss a good part of life.
On the bright side I would have more time to hop in my car, drive to the store, and buy a lottery ticket, sure of my chances of winning because “Somebody has to win, don’t they?”
It is a short drive so I don’t need that stupid seat belt.
Everybody has their own definition of what it means to live and we only get one chance at it. Mine includes trying to see as much of the world as this life allows. If that involves some risk, so be it. To me, a life with no risk, even the smallest, is no life at all. My wife and I have met some wonderful people scattered all over the world, seen some incredible places and had unforgettable experiences. We will take those memories to our graves. I could have missed it and avoided the risk, but I would also have missed a good part of life.
*All photos in top slider are destinations where Bill has traveled with us over the years. Directly above is a trip to Botswana.
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