Carefulness

Thành, holding a spear gun, wove between the reefs on the seabed looking for a large grouper to fill a seafood restaurant's order for a VIP banquet the next day. The air tank kept hissing with each breath. The world under the sea enchants divers. Suddenly his instinct warned of trouble: a tiger shark, the sea's killer, was gliding towards him.
Thành hurriedly hid himself in a small crevice in the rocks, lucky that there was one. But his two air tanks snagged and would not go in. With no time to hesitate, Thành released the straps and let the two tanks drop, then squeezed deep into the crevice just in time as the shark rushed in and opened its huge mouth to snap. That was a close call.
Thành held his breath and watched, praying that it would go away. It seemed to be hungry, so it did not leave and kept circling back and forth. When he was about to run out of breath, Thành suddenly remembered the small mini spare air tank that Hưng had tied to his chest, saying it was to guard against the unexpected. Thành had laughed at it but, afraid of upsetting his friend, had worn it when he jumped into the sea. Now it was his saviour. Thành took the mini reserve tank, opened the valve, put the mouthpiece in his mouth and pressed the button in bursts to release air to breathe in.
The spear gun had also fallen out there, and the crevice was so tight that he could do nothing, only stand still and breathe very sparingly. After more than five minutes the shark left. Thành edged out, picked up the air tanks and put them back on, picked up the spear gun and quickly rose to the surface to get into the boat. Hưng said he had seen the tiger shark swim over and had been extremely worried, able only to pray to the Sea God to protect his friend.
Only when he was on the boat did Thành say:

• Thank you, your caution saved my life. But why are you so cautious, almost excessively so?
  Hưng showed Thành the scar on his head and told him:
• When I was little I loved climbing trees to pick fruit. Once I climbed onto a thin branch to pick a star apple, and my older sister behind me grabbed my shirt and pulled me back, because star apple branches are brittle and break easily. I wrenched myself out of her hand and she shouted, "You must predict the danger before you do anything!" I still pulled free and climbed out. The result was missing school and lying in hospital for six days, with a scar on my head. Since then I have always imagined unexpected dangerous situations that could happen and taken careful precautions.
  Thành said:
• So your sister saved me today 🧜‍♂️

Being careful means anticipating the dangers and risks that may occur and preparing remedies in advance, from the start.
A careful person is an intelligent person, because they can foresee dangers and risks, whereas a foolish person does not foresee them and so is complacent, doing nothing to remedy, nothing to defuse and nothing to cope.
Whenever we assign someone a task, we must foresee the risks they might run into so that from now on there are measures to resolve them. When creating a product, we also check whether it could cause any accident to the user. Before travelling anywhere, we must work out in advance the stretches of road where there might be danger, in order to weigh whether to go.
An ethical person is many times more careful, guarding against dangers and risks to everyone around them. Seeing an old bridge perched precariously over a stream, they worry about small children crossing it, or people who walk at night falling, and so they find some way to build a new, safer bridge. Seeing that in a neighbour's house the adults often go to work and leave the little children to look after each other, which is very unsafe, they report it to the neighbourhood leader so that there is a support measure. Seeing a cracked fence that the owner has not repaired, they write a warning and also set up an obstacle so that no one goes near and gets hurt if it collapses.

At the level of national leadership, the carefulness of heads of state is of the highest order, because they must guard against the risk of instability for the whole country in every kind of situation. We live in peace day by day because someone has racked their brains to anticipate every danger and risk and has prevented and remedied them for us. We think that living in peace is normal, not knowing that living in peace is extraordinary, and that living amid all kinds of mishaps is what is normal. We live in peace and are ungrateful.

If we have ethics, if we are grateful to those who have protected our peaceful life, then we must have the ethic of carefulness: always observing everything and anticipating every danger and risk so as to remedy them from the start, so that everyone around us can live in peace in the same way.