People always say that if you educate others, then they will be more knowledgeable and open minded. Frankly, I don’t really think this is true if someone already has set pre-conceived notions of something. I’m not really exempt from that either. For example: you’ll never get me to agree with you if you say that abortion should be illegal. I understandwhy people want it to be illegal, but I do not and will never agree no matter what information you share with me. But it bugs me when people have pre-conceived notions of a place they’ve never been to merely based on random news stories they’ve read or anecdotes that friends have shared with them of places they’ve visited.

Tonight, I was telling my friend about my India trip, and she asked me if I felt safe. “Safety,” or the feeling of it as I recently read, is strongly rooted in feelings of race and class if we care to dig uncomfortably into our subconscious. “You always read about how women are constantly getting raped in India,” she said. “It’s so scary.”

I countered her point by asking her if she was aware of how scared many people in other countries feel about the U.S. in terms of how lax we are with guns, with the number of school shootings and shootings in general that happen in this country every single day. “People actually think that if they come here, they may get shot and killed,” I said to her. “It’s so easy to get a gun; anyone can do it. That’s the way it’s covered abroad. But we live here, and we know that’s not the case that we’re all fearing for our lives every single day.” Our mutual friend lived in Asia for years and said she was scared watching the news coverage of all these shootings in the U.S. Her in-laws, who lived in Singapore, said they didn’t feel comfortable with the two of them potentially moving back to the States. Not only that, but there are people who simply do not want to enter the United States while Trump is president because as foreigners, they do not feel welcome. I literally just heard this back and forth conversation between a dad and his son in Canada this past weekend. Tourism has notably declined into the U.S. since Dipshit took office.

“Maybe,” my friend said skeptically. “I’m not sure about that.”

I don’t really know what there is to be skeptical about. If you have perspective and you are aware of what’s going on around you and outside of the city or country or continent where you live, you will know that places like India or the U.S. really are not as “dangerous” as the media make them out to be. A lot of what ends up happening in our lives occur because of our attitudes and pre-judgments before events actually happen. If you complain and say that you will have a terrible time at a party before attending, you’re probably going to have a crappy time. If you keep obsessing over your luggage getting lost on a flight like that insufferable woman from Sunday, I’m pretty sure your luggage will get lost. But if you enter India or the U.S. hoping for an enjoyable time and are optimistic, it’s more likely that you will actually have fun and stop worrying about getting shot in the head or raped in the streets. I told her this. She remained skeptical.

And if you are really unsure or feel unsafe about going to a place… just don’t go. Also, don’t ruin it for other people when they express that they want to go.