Caution or Fear

I feel like sometimes, we tend to mistake caution for fear and it's something that doesn't exactly sit well with me because I happen to be a guy who loves to take caution when doing certain things, and not just jump into it regardless of if I'm going to get hurt or not.

_{photo by Etienne Girardet}

The other day, while I was cooking, I had ran out of gas and had asked my neighbor to please lend me his gas cylinder with gas in it, mainly because I feared that my food could get spoilt if I waited until I was back from the gas station to refill my own cylinder.

When I asked him for his, he had brought it with the burner seperated from the cylinder. Apparently, his gas always leaks whenever he has the burner on it, so what he does is that whenever he isn't cooking, he would take it off and then put it back on when he's about to cook.

Technically, what that also means is that while he's cooking, a little bit of gas do escape from under the burner, which is a place gas shouldn't be coming out from.

The moment he told me that, I had immediately returned the cylinder to him because I've seen what gas explosion does to people. If you're lucky and not dead, it will leave you disfigured for life. So I had immediately returned it to him and went to a different neighbour to get his.

When I did that, he began to laugh, saying that I fear a lot and that nothing bad was going to happen. But you see, I tried to explain to him that there is a difference between fear and caution. I told him that although I know he has been making use of that cylinder and that nothing bad has happened to him, it is still very unwise for anyone to continue making use of something that has shown even the tiniest of signs that it could cause you harm, especially something as dangerous as gas.

It's almost like the swimming pool situation that happened to my friend last year. You don't jump into a deep pool (just because you see everyone else doing it) because you have an inflatable ring aka a floatie on, knowing fully well that you can't swim.

I do understand that there is a thin line between being afraid and being cautious and that sometimes, people mistake one for the other. But that shouldn't make you do something stupid just because you're trying to prove a point that you're not scared.

For all I know, it's better to be scared and alive, than fearless and be a victim of a third-degree burn all over your body.