Terrorism Shouldn't Stop You From Exploring The World

Terrorism Shouldn’t Stop You From Exploring The World

When I announced my plans to travel to France, excited to share my triumph, the reaction I got from my family sunk my heart.

“The terror attack just hit Paris. Is it still safe there?”

“Europe is not safe anymore.”

“Why don’t you just stay at home? It’s safer here.”

….

With all these questions, I asked myself: is it really safe for me to go solo traveling in Europe? Would I face the threat of terrorism?

I contacted my friend in France that I was visiting. Surprisingly, she didn’t think it was dangerous at all for me to travel alone. “The rate of people dying from car accidents is much higher than terror attacks. Media emphasizes the terror attacks since they are uncommon in our life. Once the violent incident took place, the media will keep reporting about it, leaving people in fear.”

With words of affirmation from a friend, I went on my solo trip to France. On my flight to Paris, the person sitting next to me was a professor teaching French in China. I asked him about his opinion on terrorism in Europe.

“Europe is safe. People now think it is dangerous because of terrorism, but France is large and you can avoid major cities and visit rural areas. The dropping number of tourists will only make your trip cheaper, which is good news!”

He also shared his insight of how Chinese media was reporting on the terrorism issues. According to this professor, Chinese media tends to put more emphasis on terror attacks in Europe rather than on domestic social issues. Thus, the public will discuss terrorism overseas more so then paying attention to their own countries social issues and acting out against the government.

I learned this lesson through my solo adventure after graduating from high school in 2016. Of course, I ended up reunited with my friend in France and solo backpacked the Alps. Never would I have envisioned myself learning this again in a college classroom, from a science communication class. The term is called Agenda Settings -- the emphasis that mass media place on certain issues (e.g., amount of coverage) is strongly correlated to how important the mass audience will attribute to these issues (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). If mass media is controlled by the state, then the media agenda could be used as a tool of political agenda. By diverting the public’s attention to international issues affecting the rest of the world, it draws attention away from domestic issues. This is in the best interest of the government to do so as it means the public are less informed of the problems affecting their own countries and the misgivings of the government in not addressing them.

But life is an adventure and some days, we will inevitably encounter incidences as we move on to explore new places. In 2019, I headed back to Europe. This time living and studying in the Netherlands, one of the safest countries in the world. I was first living in a neighborhood called Kanaleneiland, which is considered as the outback of the city Utrecht, where the majority of the population are Turkish migrants who settled here after the city’s expansion in the 1960s. While in the US, living in such neighborhoods would make me feel very unsettled, however I felt quite safe during my time in Utrecht. However, little less than 2 months into living in Kanaleneiland, a tragic shooting happened at the tram station two blocks away from my building (that tram station was my view everyday at the gym). The date was March 18, 2019. I woke up and was about to hurry to the library. My flatmmates told me there was a shooting and nobody could leave the building anymore since the police were still searching for the suspect. For a whole day, most buildings in Utrecht were locked down and nobody could exit the building until the suspect was found. My flatmmates were translating everything from the Dutch TV for me, while sirens blared from the streets outside our windows. The shooting caused 3 deaths and 9 injured (Schreuer & Pérez-Peña, 2019), and made it to the international news headlines that day. Here is the NY Times coverage on March 18:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/europe/utrecht-shooting.html

Tram station where the shooting happened. Utrecht, 2019

I immediately received emails and messages from friends in the US and China checking to see if I was safe. It was a disturbing incidence to the community that I lived in. Nevertheless, incidences like this are very likely to happen once in a lifetime, if you don’t choose to live in a war zone or unstable regions.

However, waking up the next day, thoughts raced in my head. I could have been in that tram or passing that street when the shooting happened, would the gun be pointing at me instead? I am blessed to not be a victim of violent incident, but am I blessed the next time? Will tomorrow be the last day I live on this planet? The biggest lesson that I have learned from encountering life threatening incident, is not to live in fear. Instead, to live every day like it is the last day of your life. Even though we can choose to stay safe and be cautious, we do not have control over what will happen tomorrow. Coming to this realization, it’s easier to stay motivated everyday, to get my work done, to work harder and plan my next travel destination, to set goals and achieve them day by day. And most importantly, to cherish the people around me who can witness the beauty and sorrow of life and go on this journey with me together.

I am still praying everyday that the world will become a less violent and better place. But I know I won’t be able to change the world. I can only make some changes within myself first. Waking up learning something new is a good start. So if what I learn from the classroom won’t satisfy my curiosity anymore, it is time to plan my next travel destination and learn from the world. And I would recommend whoever can afford traveling somewhere, to do the same. As the Chinese saying goes: "It is better to travel ten thousand miles than to read ten thousand books” (Michelle Obama, 2014).

「讀萬卷書，不如行萬里路。」

“LIVE, TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, BLESS, AND DON’T BE SORRY.”

— Jack Kerouac

References:

Remarks by the First Lady at Stanford Center at Peking University. (2014). Retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/22/remarks-first-lady-stanford-center-peking-university.

Scheufele, D. A., & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9–20. doi: 10.1111/j.0021-9916.2007.00326.x

Schreuer, M., & Pérez-peña, R. (2019, March 18). Brazen Shooting Traumatizes Dutch City, Three Days After Christchurch Killings. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/europe/utrecht-shooting.html