On Friday, Nov. 13, I took a Eurostar train from London to Paris.

The same day, I visited the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa up close.

And that night, I feared in my hotel for the more than 100 people held hostage just a mile away from me.

This was the closest I have come, and hopefully ever will come, to a terrorist attack. Let me be clear: at no point was my life in danger. I do not intend to claim that I was in any way a victim of the attacks in Paris. But being so close to such terror and destruction made me think about my safety abroad and at home and how to proceed with the rest of my travels this semester.

I was in Paris with my mother, which certainly helped placate my fears. Instead of being in a poorly secured hostel, I was in a hotel with a lock on my door. My friends in Paris, across Europe and in Syracuse checked in to make sure I was OK. I told them I planned to leave Paris the next day, a day earlier than planned, to ensure safety and peace of mind for us all.

As I’ve written about before, the terrorism threat level in the United Kingdom is listed as severe, one level below an attack being imminent. I wondered how the attacks on Paris would affect living in London. The morning after the attacks, a terminal at Gatwick airport, one of the many that serve London, was evacuated due to a man carrying an air rifle and a knife into the terminal. According to BBC News, the terminal was evacuated before a controlled explosion on a suspicious package.

On the train home from Paris, I texted my friend who I’m travelling to Prague with next weekend. Should we still go on the trip? To myself, I wondered, should I go home to America?

I spent the rest of the train ride reading about the attacks. Unsurprisingly, the hot takes were out in force, from pundits, columnists and candidates all the same. I wondered why every 2016 presidential hopeful had to make a statement, as if this was somehow an opportunity for him or her to increase his or her visibility.

France is now bombing ISIS and President Barack Obama has promised America’s support. Belgium warned its citizens to stay away from Paris and the city itself closed most of its main tourist attractions.

This is what, I think, the terrorists want. They want people to avoid Paris; they want Paris to close its attractions. They want us to change our minds and our actions and they want us to bomb them. By doing so we are all giving into the terrorists and the terrorism. They win when we react.

I am still going to Prague next weekend, and I am absolutely staying in Europe until the end of my semester.

Terrorism works when we change our daily lives to account for our fear of the unknown, our fear that the Big Bad Other is always coming to get us. This is not to say that we shouldn’t be vigilant or that terrorism isn’t a threat; rather, we cannot let it control our lives.

Jack Rose is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. You can email him at jlrose@syr.edu or follow him @jrose94 on Twitter.

Published on November 16, 2015 at 10:23 pm