Almost every day begins and ends with excuses for most of us.  Let us start from the morning.  We refuse to get up from bed, when woken up by someone.  We blame the weather or the exhausting day at work on the previous day.  Then once we get up, we have an excuse not to go for the walk or the jog.  It’s raining – how can one go for a walk ?  Then we get late to work and when the boss enquires we have the common excuse of traffic congestion on the way.

Now that we are at work, do the excuses stop.  I do not think so.  When a customer calls us enquiring about a delayed delivery, we put the blame on manufacturing or some other department and explain in details how it is beyond our control.  When the customer asks as to why we did not call up and inform her, we have a box full of excuses.  We had the board meeting and two new product launches and how when we tried a few times, the customers’ phone was not reachable.

Let’s assume the day at work begins and ends with excuses.  Now, let’s move on to the gym.  As we reach the gym and our instructor enquires the reasons for our poor attendance, we have a long list of reasons.  We blame the weather, the boss, the spouse and of course the traffic is always a ready made excuse for almost everything in life.

What is interesting is that when we are late at work, we blame the traffic but when we have to go on a holiday, we are always on time to the airport never miss a flight.  We do not know how we invent excuses for things we do not enjoy but do not need excuses for things we do.

Now, let’s check at home.  We have a long list of excuses to return late from work.  Again the boss is handy and followed by heavy workload, customer visits, official dinner and so on.  We also have excuses to tell our spouse of how busy we were at work and as to why we could not call up home to inform.

We always have excuses to give our kids when they want us to take them out for a movie or to the park.  We promise to take them the following week and that week never arrives.  We have a host of excuses to postpone it multiple times till the children stop asking us or forget about their request.  

After we return home, we again have good excuses to tell our spouse as to why we could not pay electricity bills or water bills.  We have reasons to miss the doctor’s appointment.  We sometimes even forget our kids birthday party and have excuses to justify that.

It is like we may have an excuse for not wearing the seat belt in the back seat of a car as in the picture above ? We may say that nothing would happen in the back seat and nobody wears it anyway and hence why should I ?

Is life full of excuses ?  May be if we want it that way.  However, if we decide to take charge of ourselves, may be life would be different.  We have reasons to be happier.  We may not need excuses to justify our existence at home or work.  Life may be happier and cosier.

Let’s try it from today.

S Ramesh Shankar