How to Ease Travel Anxiety in an Era of Terror: Travel More
By DAVID SHAFTELJUNE 8, 2017
Every time my anxiety about travel seems to have subsided, new horrific
and deadly terrorist attacks in Britain, like the one at London Bridge on Saturday, close to where my wife and I once lived, and the bombing just days before at the Manchester Arena, have brought my worries back to the fore, especially since we’re off to London in a couple of weeks.
I knew the attacks in no way made my own situation more perilous — indeed, behavior economists say
that a heightened sense of collective fear actually makes us more vigilant and therefore safer — but it was surprisingly saddening to be so far from home when such a terrible scene was unfolding in a completely different part of the world.
Morocco, too, was perilous, it turned out, but not in the way I thought it might be in the depths of my anxiety: One of our hotel rooms was burglarized by a chambermaid; I tore a tendon in my calf playing tennis; my wife
and daughter held an allegedly defanged cobra in Jemaa el Fna, the main market square in Marrakesh; and I acquired a Category 5 hangover from Churchill’s signature cocktail, which it turns out is geared more toward functioning alcoholics than holidaymakers.
I was on a tiny regional jet from Knoxville, Tenn., to New York last summer — a harrowing experience at the best of times — when our flight was diverted to Erie, Pa.,
because of, as far as I could tell, a rumor of rain at La Guardia Airport.
" he said, "they come back correspondingly more relaxed about traveling again in the future." It’s true: The more I travel in today’s security climate, and refuse to alter my behavior, the better I feel about travel — and the sillier I feel afterward for worrying.
that When people have traveled to destinations where they have initially been nervous of going to and they haven’t encountered anything adverse,