Shouldn’t we be cautious!?
Caution !! to be more specific, over-caution, that’s what we are discussing today.
Isn’t being cautious a good thing?, well yes. While being careful and cautious keeps us tethered to the present moment, we ought to be mindful about being overly cautious. Be it about ourselves or our loved ones. At times, we are too wary about the little things or about the zillion what ifs that we end up quitting the thing itself.
In fact, caution should prepare us better to face the situation, as opposed to evading the situation as a whole. Also, over caution breeds fear and prompts a risk aversive attitude, no matter how small the task at hand might be.
We’ll try understanding it over a hypothetical example.
Let’s say you ought to travel abroad this month and the airfare to travel now is fairly cheap compared to that on the later days of the month, owing to the upcoming festive season.
However, it would be your first time travelling alone for so long and with the connecting flights in between. The moment you think of going “All Alone” a thousand questions pop up in your head and you get overwhelmed. Any how, a few of your friends are going to the same place by the month end, so you can wait and join them to avoid going alone.
What would you choose? Go alone now or Go with friends later. To help you choose better, let’s understand the small yet significant consequences of both the options.
Go alone now:
1. It would elevate your confidence and you could be utterly set to travel alone in the future.
2. You would learn to manage things (if not all, at least a few) on your own.
3. You could get some time to look around and who knows!? you might make a few new connections too.
4. Last but not the least, you would save up on the airfare.
Go with friends later:
- You would feel safer and would be more comfortable, for you have some company all the way.
- The hustle might be lower and you would get some support for managing your things.
- It would be a bit crowded due to the festive season and you might not get much time to explore.
- You would end up paying more for your travel.
So yeah, now it’s onto you to choose.
You might be wondering about how to demarcate between caution and excess caution. I guess in few cases, it’s when the process of commencing a thing becomes overwhelming or harrowing. That’s when we need to pan out and try to get a holistic picture. We might be just worrying about the hundred obscure things that could go wrong, when what actually matters is the one certain thing that could go right.
To wind up, we need to be careful about how much we care, as
“Excess care causes only nightmare”.
PS: These are just my personals views about being cautious and overly cautious. Hope you found it insightful, please feel free to share your opinions on the topic in the comment section.