Living Without Seatbelts: Daring and Caution Are Friends, Not Enemies

Whether we’re 15 or 65, let’s be sure to keep the sword of play and courage polished up and shining. (Fei Meng)

“Be safe” was a popular farewell during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cashiers, restaurant servers, friends signing off on the phone—a lot of people offered this bit of comfort and advice. That phrase trotted offstage along with the virus, but millions of people still say, as they did before the circus of masks and social distancing, “Take care.” It’s a standard parting comment, offered without much thought although still precautionary.

In many ways, “take care” is now a byword in our culture, for surely never before have Americans displayed such an obsession with safeguards. Search online for “American concern for safety,” and up spring dozens of platforms regarding our worries about crime, traveling, health, and more. Explore “risk-averse Americans,” and you’ll find commentators arguing that Americans have grown far more wary about rolling the dice in everything from finances to matters of the heart.

So is America now a seatbelt culture, metaphorically speaking? Have we become a people who are always testing the winds for trouble, looking before we leap, not with our eyes alone but with a microscope?

For more than 2,000 years, prudence has ranked high among the virtues. Careful management of our affairs is the mark of the wise. The man who sets aside money for a rainy day, the mom who reprimands her kindergartener for his tree-climbing antics, the defensive driver—all are behaving prudently.

On the other hand, another of the virtues is courage. If we’re afraid to speak up among friends discussing politics, fearful that they may disdain us, then prudence has overwhelmed courage. If we’re young, in good physical health, and still wearing a COVID mask in the grocery store, then a diseased version of prudence is our master.

Prudence derives from the Latin prudentia, meaning sagacity and insight. Courage comes to us from cor, the Latin word for heart. The first has to do with mind, the second with spirit. When we idolize one, we lay low the other.

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Given our reluctance to speak our minds in public these days, our apparent epidemic of loneliness, and our skittish fear of dangers, real or imagined, many of us have, in fact, embraced prudence and neglected courage. This favoritism in turn affects the way we live. Do we approach each day as if we’re opening a package that may contain a bomb, or do we tear into that gift of a day with the delight of a child at Christmas? Do we sidle warily about the world, as if danger or failure lurked in every twist and turn of the pavement? Or do we carry in our hearts a bit of the swashbuckler and make an adventure of that precious day?

Here’s one point to consider in light of those questions. The average person in the United States lives 27,375 days. In just less than two years, should all go well, I'll have surpassed that mark. The way I look at it, every day after that is gravy. So here’s a question: Should I let that swashbuckler come out and play more often, keeping prudence as a companion? Should I delight more in the adventure of living?

You’re darn right I should.

And so should you, no matter your age.

Prudence warns against foolishness but not against a lust for life. From time to time, most of us give way to fear or excessive caution, and perhaps justifiably so. But whether we’re 15 or 65, let’s be sure to keep the sword of play and courage polished up and shining.

“L’audace, l’audace, tourjours l’audace!” goes the old adage. Always audacity. Always courage. Maybe instead of saying “take care” when we bid goodbye to a 7-11 clerk or a friend, we should sound off with a jaunty “toujours l’audace!” Right off the bat, that French not only lends us an air of sophistication, but it kickstarts us into a mood of adventure.

“Take care” and “toujours l’audace.” Use them both. Live them both. As always, balance is everything.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.