No empire collapses overnight. No relationship shatters in an instant. No institution crumbles from a single blow. Carelessness operates in increments — it chips away, layer by layer, until what once stood unshakable is reduced to ruins.
This is how carelessness wins — it convinces us that the small mistake is meaningless. Until it isn’t.
Perhaps the greatest cost of carelessness is not in engineering failures or financial collapses, but in the human soul. A thoughtless word that wounds. A promise made and broken. A moment of inattention that changes the course of a life.
To be attentive is to resist the slow unraveling, to stand guard against the entropy that threatens all things. It is the difference between a life well-lived and a life sleepwalked through.