Excuses

 

"Excuses are the tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness."

Those words by Obama sank deep down and hit a raw nerve. Truth be told, excuses are sweet and easy; they come in handy whenever we need to pacify our conscience when it starts to beat us for not doing the best we could to help a situation. E.g I have failed in life because so and so didn't give all the help I needed; I am depressed because those who should, have failed to encourage and motivate me; how I turned out is no thanks to my poor/toxic upbringing; I am this because the government is that; the list, really, is inexhaustible.  And one terribly unfortunate thing about a bag of excuses is that it is so light and easy to carry, which is why a good many of us effortlessly  take it with us wherever we go so much so that at any point in our lives when things fail  to go as planned or expected, there is a ready-made excuse. Yes, the blame could be on anyone or anything else but never on us. No, we are never the reason why we aren't where we ought to be.

One thing I've come to realize in my journey so far is -- so long as we keep blaming others, keep making excuses, our lives will always remain less productive  and near-empty since Mr Excuses takes away the wisdom  to  look inward and ask: 'Where did I go wrong ; what can I do differently  to get better results?' It is tantamount  to striking our foot against a stone but cursing whoever put the stone there rather than chide ourselves for not looking where we were going. Granted, the inventor of the obstacle was wrong but what can you do about that? Even if you do meet him and confront him, how many people have you met in this life that readily accept that they are wrong? Or you've not heard that the easiest way to wear yourself out is to try to change someone else? Yes, the average  human is wise in their own eyes and might never own up to their acts of carelessness, selfishness, failing to care when they ought to.

So the cause of wisdom, the way to peace and productivity  is to always tell yourself that nobody owes you anything since they didn't send your parents to birth you; to never help with the expectation that you would have help when you need it, you just might be in for a rude shock. To keep in mind that there are genuine, selfless people who would turn up for you any day,any time and to focus on appreciating them as focussing on and getting bitter about those who failed you is ingratitude to those who did help, you are indirectly telling those who helped that their help is insignificant. By harping on the unavailable  you indirectly hold in contempt the love and care of the available, you make them feel not enough and not good enough, which I must let you know hurts deeper than a stab. Really! There's too much frustration in counting your losses while only acknowledging your blessings , but try for once to only, once in a blue moon, acknowledge your losses so you know where to do better next time while making it habit to count your blessings daily. I tell you, the latter births gratitude and gratitude in turn births joy, peace and progress.

Yes lovelies,"A man can fail many times but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else" --John Boroughs; so "It is better to direct your anger towards problems, not people, to focus your energies on answers,not excuses"-' William Arthur Ward. And keep in mind that "success is not obtained overnight. It comes in installments; you get a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow until the whole package is given out. The day you procrastinate, you lose that day's success"--Israel Ayivor. True,we might all have been guilty of making too many excuses to hide selfishness or incompetence,but we can be better. Whatever  we've gone through,it pales in comparism to the hardships and  suffering others have endured, yet they overcame them with their joy intact. May we, together,always look for our own contributions to our failures and hardships, then do whatever we can to fix the fixable, grow from them and move ahead with the right attitude because sometimes it takes only our attitude to make that difference that would light up our lives.

This is life, losses are inevitable but lesser with no bag of excuses available. As for me, I'm sweeping my space, I do hope you sweep yours too and leave others to sweep theirs. In this way the whole world will be clean, failures and excuses will be few.

Jochebed