Lady Uppity and the Excuses Express

The bus that goes absolutely nowhere

Lady Uppity does not drive. Which, one might think, would make the bus an especially attractive option.

It does not.

Lady Uppity does not take the bus.

There. She said it.

This should not be particularly noteworthy except that, for quite some time, Lady Uppity could not simply say, “I don’t want to take the bus.”

Oh no.

She had reasons.

Lots and lots of reasons.

The schedules were wonky. The website was confusing. The fares didn’t make sense. And according to her calculations, a trip that took twenty-five minutes by car could take ninety minutes by bus.

Ninety minutes!

How could that possibly make sense?

Whenever some well-meaning friend asked, “Why don’t you just take the bus?” Lady Uppity was prepared.

She had done her research. She knew the routes. She had studied the schedules. She could present an impressive and, she believed, quite compelling case for why taking the bus simply would not work.

The fact that there was a bus stop directly in front of her home was irrelevant.

Lady Uppity was prepared to argue her case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

And argue she did.

Until one day she realized something rather inconvenient.

She didn’t want to take the damn bus.

That was it.

She wasn’t afraid of the bus. She wasn’t incapable of figuring out the schedule. There was no deep psychological mystery involving public transportation.

She simply didn’t want to.

So why couldn’t she just say that?

All Aboard the Excuses Express

At some point, Lady Uppity realized she had been riding a bus after all.

The Excuses Express.

And unlike the city bus, which would eventually take her somewhere, the Excuses Express traveled in circles.

Same stop.

Same scenery.

Same story.

Round and round she went, passionately arguing for all the reasons she couldn’t possibly do something she had already decided she didn’t want to do.

Richard Bach once wrote, “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.”

Ouch.

Lady Uppity had become quite good at arguing for hers.

But something else was hiding underneath all those perfectly reasonable excuses.

She wanted other people to approve of her choice.

Apparently, “I don’t want to” didn’t seem like a good enough reason.

Perhaps if she could explain herself well enough, everyone would understand. They would agree with her. They might even say, “Why, of course you shouldn’t take the bus!”

Then Lady Uppity could have what she wanted without having to endure the uncomfortable possibility that someone else might think she was being foolish, difficult, impractical—or just plain wrong.

Ah.

There it was.

The fear wasn’t about taking the bus.

The fear was about disappointing other people.

Chocolate or Vanilla?

Imagine someone offers you a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

You wanted chocolate.

You could say, “No thanks. I’d rather have chocolate.”

Simple enough.

You probably wouldn’t feel compelled to explain that vanilla takes too long to eat, that the bowl is inconvenient, that you’ve researched vanilla and discovered some troubling things about it, or that under certain circumstances vanilla could take ninety minutes longer than chocolate.

You don’t want vanilla.

You want chocolate.

No defense necessary.

Yet how often do we do exactly that with the choices in our lives?

We assemble evidence. We explain. We justify. We tell ourselves—and everyone else—all the reasons we can’t.

Perhaps somewhere along the way we learned that wanting something wasn’t enough.

Or that not wanting something wasn’t enough.

We needed a good reason.

We needed other people to understand.

Better yet, we needed them to approve.

And without even noticing what we’ve done, we give away our own authority.

Then we blame the circumstances for taking it from us.

Fear May Be the Truth

Here’s where excuses get interesting.

Sometimes underneath all those explanations is something much simpler.

I’m afraid.

I don’t know how.

I’m tired.

I made a mistake.

I don’t want to.

Fear isn’t the excuse.

Fear may be the truth.

And what if, instead of building an elaborate case around our fear, we simply allowed ourselves to acknowledge it?

I’m afraid.

Is that okay?

Of course it is.

We don’t have to make fear go away before we move forward. We don’t have to explain it, defend it, or pretend it isn’t there.

But we do have to stop using it to build a case for our own powerlessness.

Stop making excuses and tell yourself the truth.

Because once we tell the truth, we have choices.

Excuses keep us circling.

Truth gives us somewhere to stand.

And Then Comes Responsibility

There was one more slightly annoying discovery waiting for Lady Uppity.

Once she admitted that she simply didn’t want to take the bus, she also had to accept responsibility for that choice.

If she didn’t want to take the bus, fine.

But then it was up to her to figure out another way to get where she wanted to go.

Uber. A ride with a friend. Stay home. Change the plan.

Her choice.

Her responsibility.

Funny how those two arrive holding hands.

We sometimes think blaming other people—or circumstances—is easier. If something outside us is responsible for our choices, then perhaps we don’t have to be.

But there is a price for that.

We give away our authority.

And then blame the circumstances for taking it.

Responsibility isn’t blame.

Responsibility simply says:

This is my choice.

And because it is my choice, I get to decide what comes next.

That is where our power lives.

Not in forcing ourselves to do something we don’t want to do.

Not in making the “right” choice so everyone else will approve.

Not even in getting on the damn bus.

Our power lives in telling ourselves the truth and then taking responsibility for the choice we make from there.

Lady Uppity still does not take the bus.

She simply stopped requiring everyone else to agree that she shouldn’t.

And somewhere out there, the Excuses Express is making another trip around the block.

This time, Lady Uppity isn’t on it.