It seems like it only takes a sneeze for an entire building to be infected with anxiety these days. It only takes a walk down a dimly lit street, buying an airline ticket, or using your credit card on a website that may or may not be of reputable security to stir the first tendrils of fear in the pits of our stomachs. Even posting on social media, or eating a burger can be activities wrought with terror.

In our society, despite all illusions to the contrary, fear rules the hearts and minds of people more than any politician could. Granted, the politicians may have something to do with it. But at the center of the matter, anxiety controls our plans, our actions, and even our thoughts.

You can’t watch the news or pick up a newspaper without finding something to be scared of. It makes things seem all the closer, all the more threatening. Ebola, the invisible killer of thousands of people, is supposedly knocking on our front door.

ISIS, who has been featured in the media recently for acts of horrific violence, is targeting Americans, Europeans, and really anyone they can use for leverage for terror. Eastern Europe, armed with nuclear weapons, seems ready to explode any day, which of course would cause riptides of anxiety and violent outbreaks.

Not to mention all of the fears that pop-up in every day life. While worrying about the state of the world, people also must worry about themselves, their health, their financial stability, their safety, their government, their loved ones, and their health, finances, and safety.

“So what could be the solution to the impossible task people face of living their lives everyday with this debilitating trepidation? This is my proposition, stop it.”

With all of these things happening, it is no wonder that 43 percent of Americans are taking some sort of mood-altering medication, whether it is for anxiety or depression.

Fear is looming over society with a crushing weight. It isn’t even necessarily caused by all of these events, which are not isolated, but a chain reaction.

No, fear is an epidemic throughout the world, even in places where no action can be taken to prevent these fearful happenings. In fact, 60 percent of people fear things that will never happen. 30 percent of people are afraid of things that have already happened, and are likely to never happen again. 88 percent of people fear health related things that will never occur.

Fear and anxiety are so prevalent in the United States that 6.3 million people are diagnosed with some sort of phobia, and 40 million people (that’s 18 percent of the population) are diagnosed with some kind of anxiety disorder. Although these are the official statistics, they only touch the tip of the iceberg, as most people never report fear, anxiety and mental distress.

In fact, I would wager that most of the things that people fear are caused by their fear; whether it’s illness, crime, bankruptcy, or violence, many of these actions have a basis in fear or anxiety, and the strain that are causes in daily life.

What could be the solution to the impossible task that people face of living their lives everyday with this debilitating trepidation? This is my proposition.

Stop it.

To the best of your ability, stop propagating this fear that is being pushed by the government, the media, and other people, because it really isn’t anything new. People have feared things for as long as we have existed as a species. But just the fact that our culture is so dependent on technology and efficient communication makes us more susceptible to catch the fear bug, since we have the ability to know when things happen the second they do. With the changes of globalization, so came the tides of global conflict and danger.

And really the fear is useless as there is nothing you can do to immediately make the world a safer place. There is nothing that you can guarantee will happen until it does, there are very few things that you can accurately predict. Sometimes there is nothing you can do at all about these things; no matter the length of time you have to affect change. Instead of letting fear dictate your life, why don’t you actually live it instead?

After all, we are stuck here, on this earth, in this life… at least until they devise a way to make Mars inhabitable. And by then it will be too late, trust me.

-Ashley Nickel