No one cares about your excuses

I was running late and there was nothing much I could do about it. I could not get a convenient ride from dial-a-chopper to get me where I needed to be on time nor could I  run in record time to get there. All I could do was pray for the best.

I had scheduled two interviews hours and miles apart, knowing there was ample time in between to get to each without much of a fuss. However, as with many other best laid plans, mine came apart. I got delayed for the first interview, eating into my travel time for the second interview. I had to rush through the first so that I could barely make it, huffing and puffing into the second. It was at a place I wasn't too familiar with and I looked like a mad woman running from one block to the other asking the askaris I found for directions without really stopping to get them right. Eventually, I gobbled up the stairs to the first floor where our meeting was to take place and almost missed my host as she was walking out of her office. I was already in quite a state: not the picture one is supposed to present of herself for first impressions and especially not for a meeting with a lady boss whom you needed to remember you in good light: My face was moist with sweat, shoes dusty, and I out of breath. But I managed to mouth my introductions and to beg that she give me a few minutes of her time.

As I blurted out my excuses, she gave me a once over and sternly replied:

"Nobody cares about your excuses."

And then she went ahead to explain that she had other things on her schedule that she couldn't delay for my sake. I had had my slot on her to-do list but I wasted it. That wasn't her problem. Previously, I was used to people taking my excuses for lateness kindly and indulging me, after all were we not all African's with only a sense of African time? But this lady's remarks cut me, and she was right. After that lifetime lesson/ lecture, she gave me a warm welcoming smile. She only had 10 minutes to spare, would that be enough? I mouthed a quick yes and we went ahead to have a brief interview that went well and gleaned all of what I needed. She walked into her next meeting without huffing and puffing and I left her office with a lesson that I'll never forget: Nobody cares about your excuses. Nobody cares about your good intentions; what they want is to see the work done. Whenever, I want to make excuses for myself or anyone else, I remember that nobody cares about my excuses and I do what I need to do. I thought about this just before the recent anniversary of my birth. I looked at my life and the excuses I had given myself this past year, the fears I had given in to, the risks I had failed to take and the things I was yet to do and I remembered that nobody cares about my excuses, all they want is to see things happening. So I'm toasting to a more adventurous year where I take more risks. So help me God.

And here are the quotes I keep around my neck to remind me not to give any excuses:

• For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. - Jean-Paul Satre

• I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse. - Florence Nightingale

• The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it. - Jordan Belfort

• At the end of the day, let there be no excuses, no explanations, no regrets. - Steve Maraboli

• He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. - Benjamin Franklin

• Never make excuses. Your friends don't need them and your foes won't believe them. - John Wooden

• Do not make excuses, whether it's your fault or not. - George S Patton Jr

• The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions. - Dwight Eisenhower

• It's easy to blame traffic jam when you're late and in a hurry. - Toba Beta