The Two Flavors

David Brooks mentioned the two “flavors” of worry in America. The first one is election related anxiety, many people depend on this election because all candidates want to make drastic changes. An example why people in America are feeling anxiety about this election because of Donald Trump’s idea to build a wall that separates the United States and also try his best to kick out all the immigrants who live in the United States. This election has to be the most outrageous of them all not only because there are a lot of differences between the candidates but because this is the first time in history a woman is up for election to be the next president of the United States. The second flavor David Brooks mentions is the educated-class anxiety, and according to Brooks “can be characterized as a feeling overabundant of options without a convicting purpose.” There are studies shown that rich countries have more anxiety than poor countries. The World Health Organization states that 18.2 percent of Americans have constant anxiety,” while only 3.3 percent of Nigerians do.” Brooks also explains worry to have the “fear of missing out”, which does make sense. A lot of people do fear to be left out, I’m not really sure why people feel the need to receive attention all the time. Maybe they grew up having everyone’s attention that’s why it feels weird when other people are focused on something else and not on them. Also, many people feel the need to fit in, so maybe that’s another reason why David Brooks said that people fear to be left out or miss out. I see the second “flavor” playing in my friendships because sometimes I do fear of missing out on some of the things they do. For example, whenever they go out and they don’t tell me about it right away I feel like I’m missing out. Yes, I know I have been missing out on a lot of things but the main reason for that being is because either I have to go to work or I have to go to school and focus on turning in my assignments. Another fear of being left out with family is this year I’m not going to come home for the holidays due to my work schedule. I know I am going to miss out on a lot of things this year because of my priorities with school and work.