excuses, excuses

One thing I find interesting about us is that we never want to accept failure. We actually never really want to accept anything detrimental to ourselves. So we will make excuses for our failures or our mistakes.
Maybe we didn't make a mistake; perhaps we just didn't do as well as we wanted to. So we find an excuse. It's a way of clearing yourself of blame; justifying your action.
I'm not going to say I have never done this because I would be lying. I often try to excuse myself from doing something like not reading a chapter in a book or not finishing homework.
My favorite excuse from people is "I don't have time". It's my favorite. I only use that when I really don't have time to do something, but some people use it as much as they actually do work. I was working on an immigrant letter for history and I made it really nice - I painted it brown so it looked old, I tore the sides and painted them black to make it look burnt, and I did the same ot the envelope. It looked really legit. And this girl who bothers me in school was telling me how good it was, which was nice. But she said she didn't have time to do anything like that so that's why her letter wasn't as fancy as mine. But I had to not study for a quiz to finish that letter, and I stayed up past midnight to finish it. So really, I didn't have time to do it either. I made time to do it. And that's the difference. You have to create time to do things you want or need to do. You can't just passively wait for some random time to come when you have nothing else going on. That's how life wastes away.
Or people will say, "I didn't have time to read the chapters, so I couldn't do it." But you know, you have to do what you have to do. You might have other things to do, but you have to plan your time so you can make it work.
And I must say I have said this a number of times, and I regret it. Becauses babies make excuses. Real people realize that they did something deliberately and nothing else forced them to not take action.
I'm going to try not to make excuses for things when they go wrong. I know it's hard not to because it makes life easier. Try to do so as well. Because when you make excuses, you are only degrading yourself, and you are losing respect for yourself. You won't even like yourself if you are not honest with yourself.
It's almost like reconciling with yourself if you tell the truth. We are all human, so we all make mistakes. Humans were not meant to be perfect because if we were we would not even recognize the world we live in as anything like what we would live in.
It's OK to admit your humanity. Just go for it.
As Jason Mraz's album is called, We sing. We dance. We steal things.