When I arrived at the Saigon airport, no one, not even the United Airlines staff, knew where my luggage was. At that point, I started wondering about all the different scenarios. Would I not get it in time? Is it stuck somewhere in China? What would I do in Vietnam without spare clothes in a hella hot climate? I ended up getting my luggage delivered to my hostel the next day.
In Bombay, I had gotten a couple mosquito bites. Pretty annoying. But then I got sick, and had a fever. I looked up all the symptoms I had in the lonely planet guides I had downloaded, and all the dangerous diseases had pretty much the same symptoms. Perfect. So it could have been malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, or some other wonderful illness. Thankfully, the blood test revealed that I was suffering from none of the above and I was fine the next day.
My trip had a few more incidents like this, where something would be happening and I didn’t know what would happen. But in many cases everything would turn out fine and normal. While the worst can happen, so can the benign. Worrying and stressing about it are just more ways to waste your mental energy.