When I was eleven years old, my family took a trip out to Yellowstone National Park. On the first day there, I bought a book about grizzly bear attacks from the gift shop. I read the book cover-to-cover one day while I lounged in the back of our cream and red-striped 1989 Econoline van.
As we lumbered through the park for the next few days, I got jumpy and hurried my walking in that way you do when you rush up the basement steps after the light has been shut off. The grizzly bear could be anywhere.
That book had piqued my morbid curiosity in the same way it does to us all when we drive past a car wreck. I couldn’t look away. I had soaked in every word, and I was terrified.
It taught me a valuable lesson at that young age. I later learned that there is only one bear attack (on average) each year at Yellowstone of the FOUR MILLION people who visit.
The lesson was that if I focus on the bad stuff, I lose perspective, and the minor problem becomes a life-or-death scenario. If we concentrate on any information without context is a recipe for disaster.
Unless you are the one guy who gets attacked, then you were right to be concerned.