Excuses Only Satisfy Those Who Make Them
My Story
Someone I knew used to always says, “Excuses only satisfy those who make them.” I didn’t know it, at that time, but turns out it’s a popular quote (I haven’t been able to find by whom.) It’s been decades and that saying still comes to mind from time to time. An excuse is defined as an explanation offered as a reason for being excused; a plea offered in extenuation of a fault or for release from obligation, promise, etc.
About Excuses
Excuses only satisfy those who make them. At the end of the day, we who made the excuse, might be satisfied; but what we said we would do is not done; or what we vowed or promised not to do, we did anyway. We didn’t keep our word. Yet, our excuse gets us off the hook. It serves to release us from our obligation, under extenuating circumstances- reasons beyond our control. We were just a victim of our circumstance.
Excuses show up in in every area of our life, too. They show up in our finances: why we can’t or don’t budget; why we can’t or don’t track our spending; why we can’t save; why we still don’t have life insurance; why we’re still broke; and why we aren’t paying it forward to the next generation.
And of course, excuses show up in our personal relationships, in our spiritual lives, in our personal self-care, etc. All with perfectly legitimate reasons for why we didn’t show up when we said we were
going to; why we did what we said we would not; why we didn’t do what we said we would; why we keep saying and doing the same things. Excuses really do satisfy those who make them- or do they?
Do excuses really satisfy those who make them? On the surface, yes. If we don’t think about it too much, excuses roll of our tongue as we try to explain away what we did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say. And for some things, we never give it a second thought. Our minds move on to the next thing that gets our attention. But for big things, our excuses don’t satisfy us who made them. Our conscious still eats away at us because we know we were wrong. We didn’t keep our Word- again. That’s not a good feeling and it doesn’t wash away with an excuse. We are violating our own conscious. Our actions (what we do) are not lining up with what we say or how we present ourselves; and that’s a breach of integrity.
The Word of God says, “The just [righteous] man walks in his integrity (Proverbs 20:7a). Let’s start calling things what they are. Acknowledging when we are wrong is a pre-requisite to changing what we do. Excuses don’t move us towards acknowledgement. So, whether you didn’t show up for someone else, for your own self, you can do better, today. Today’s a new day, a new opportunity. You can start doing what you say, start showing up in a better way. You still have time to change that former situation.
Conclusion
No one’s perfect, but don’t use that as an excuse not to try to be a person of integrity.
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Definition (Excuse) by Dictionary.com 8/27/2021
