The Misplaced Address of Care. - by Oluwatobi Kolawole

--- I remember the day fear learned how to travel at the speed of data.A video went viral, warning people not to carry their phones near cooking gas, lest a spark of technology marry a pocket of fire and become tragedy. Like every well-meaning alarm bell, I rang it loudly. I forwarded it to everyone who wore the soft badge of being important in my life. Family. Friends. Colleagues. Even acquaintances. If your name lived in my phone, you were eligible for rescue.After sending it out, I watched the video again. This time, not as a messenger, but as a mirror. It dawned on me how little care I had extended to myself, a person who enjoys cooking, a person who lives daily with gas and flame, trusting routine like an old friend. I had warned others while leaving myself uncovered, like a town crier without an umbrella in the rain.Then someone replied. They asked who witnessed the incident. Who confirmed it. Where it happened. And just like that, my good intentions were stripped to their bones.We all know these people. The ones who spot cracks before the wall collapses. The ones who ask questions while everyone else claps. We meet them in our work meetings and WhatsApp group chats. We call them high flyers because meticulousness has a way of announcing itself. Even when it arrives with embarrassment in its hands.We admire them. I do too. I admire people who catch my errors early, the way a lighthouse interrupts a ship before it kisses the rocks.Some weeks ago, I had casually used a derogatory term to describe a group of new colleagues. In my mind, it was classification. In theirs, it was an insult. I did not know. Ignorance dressed itself as innocence, and I wore it confidently until it was pulled off.The correction came clean and sharp. No soft landings. No respect for age or rank. Just truth, standing upright. I received it and apologized. Because being human teaches you where your limits are, and humility teaches you that stupidity is not selective. It visits everyone.That day, I was corrected not by a peer but by someone younger. And the sky did not fall.The gas episode followed the same script. The man went on at length about how we share what we do not verify, how logic should hold our fingers before they tap the share button. He was right. And yet, he was also wrong. Because two truths can sit on the same bench without fighting for space.I began to think of parental care in Africa. A continent shaped by respect, honor, and dignity, sometimes mistaken for sycophancy. A place where concern can look like control, and care can resemble suspicion.Here, care is often interpreted through a narrow lens. My child first. My child always. The safety of another person's child is negotiable, but mine is sacred. Many have argued that parental care is selfish, that it cannot be the purest form of love. As though love must be logical to be valid.But naming it makes it easier to accept. Because sometimes care is not logical. Sometimes it is emotional. Sometimes it panics before it reasons. And maybe that is allowed.Imagine a parent inspecting every car that might pass a road before letting their child step outside. The fear, the anxiety, the constant rehearsal of loss that plays in a parent's mind explains that kind of selfishness.Raising a child is hard. So hard that illogical reactions dressed as care are often pardoned. And that selfishness stretches far, sometimes without limit. Some parents even live vicariously through their children, claiming the right to borrowed dreams because they paused their own lives for the child's survival.When the young man questioned me years ago, I did not reply. I knew my action had been foolish, but my care had simply missed its address. I say this in defense of everyone else who never received that video from me that day. The overwhelming majority of my contacts. Not because I could not send it, but because I did not care enough to.Time has a way of defending our parents when we finally grow into their fears. Years pass, and life introduces and re-introduces itself not as a playground but as a menace we must negotiate with daily. Perspective widens. Stretches beyond the heavens. We begin to understand that our parents were not wicked when they kept us indoors. They were not cruel when they stayed awake during their late-night shifts, hungry, so we could eat. They were not controlling when they insisted on safety over freedom. They were simply caring in the only language fear could teach them.And maybe care, like love, does not always arrive with poise and composure. Sometimes it arrives clumsy. Sometimes unverified. Sometimes selfish. But at its root, it is still an attempt to keep what matters alive. --- Author's NoteIf you happened to see a man at the new Blackbell in Gbagada, dressed in a white shirt, standing too close to the television, shouting at the Arsenal vs Manchester United game as though the players could hear him through the screen, please understand this clearly: it was not me.That version of recklessness does not belong to my character. I am far more composed than that, or at least that is the story I tell myself.Lately, I have been reading The Parlour Wife, and it has reminded me of something quietly profound. History, when told as dates and events, feels skeletal. But literature gives it flesh. It restores the pulse. It teaches you not just what happened, but what it cost to feel it while it was happening. The weight of an era is better carried through emotion than through facts, because knowing what people endured is far heavier than merely knowing what they survived.Yeah, so this piece is not a defense of ignorance, nor an excuse for carelessness. It is an invitation to hold logic and empathy in the same hands. To correct without cruelty. To care without pride. To remember that most warnings, even the poorly framed ones, are often born from fear, not foolishness.

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