The State of Excuses

I apologize for the anecdotal nature of this post, but just hang with me for a minute.

 I recently had the good fortune to speak with sisters, Kristy and Michelle, old friends of mine, candidly about how they were handling their lives currently.  The sisters are roughly my age (2 years apart from each other – Michelle is the older of the two).  They have an apartment together which they had gotten several years ago after Michelle went through a nasty divorce.  The apartment is a spacious two bedroom, gorgeously and stylishly decorated (I’m a little envious of the skill, I’ll admit).  Michelle’s room has the same flow as the rest of the apartment, light, stylishly, though sparsely decorated.  Kristy’s room is….not any of that.  It’s dark and it is full (and I mean so full) of stuff.  When I say stuff, I mean, every surface is covered. The perimeter of the room is just one piece of furniture after another, no space between them. The walls are covered with posters and pictures.  It’s headache inducing at the very least.  It is also baffling to see the difference between the two. 

 I sat down (on zoom) to catch up with both of them (Michelle showed me around the apartment via video).  I could tell that Michelle was looking so much better than the last time I saw her.  She looked like she had lost some weight (they were both on the heavier side) and toned up and just looked – well, happy. Kristy on the other hand, looked tired and a little beat up.  As we talked, Michelle told me how miserable she was after her divorce.  She put on weight, slept all of the time when she wasn’t working and just generally did not want to do much of anything.  She said she caught herself in the mirror one day, some months after the divorce, and said it just clicked. She realized that she was miserable and hated her life. The apartment was a mess, her life was a mess. She decided then to change it.  She decided she needed to love herself more, so she stopped eating fast food (apparently that was a staple of their diets).  She completely redid their apartment (except for Kristy’s room – who wouldn’t let her touch it).  She said just the apartment redo itself was a HUGE motivator for her. She opened windows to let some light in, repainted everything, purged a LOT, redecorated – using a lot from thrift stores.  She claimed that once the apartment was airy and light, it felt like a huge weight came off. She could focus better on what was important – and for her what was important was taking care of herself.  She made a point of getting out more, walking, biking, trying new things, going new places.  She said she was slowed down a bit by a few medical issues that cause her pain, but she pushed through, and once weight started coming off AND she got used to the activities, a lot of her pain had lessened significantly and she felt stronger than ever.

 Okay, I know all of this sounds trite. We’ve all heard those stories – one day the epiphany happened and I ate better exercised and lost weight and life was wonderful.  This is not exactly that story. 

 So one thing I noticed during this exchange was Kristy.  She often rolled her eyes while Michelle was speaking.  When Michelle would good naturedly rib her for not walking/biking with her or not cleaning up her room, Kristy was immediately ready with an excuse. Kristy insisted that her knee pain kept her from walking.  When I asked if she was having someone look at it – No, it’s just ordinary knee pain and they will just tell her to lose some weight. She saw no reason to get rid of anything. She said everything she owned brought her joy. To her it did not matter if she picked it up every day or once a month or once a year – it was hers and she would not get rid of it. Michelle suggested organizing then – maybe getting some bins (they had a small storage area for extras in the basement of their apartment building) and then maybe she could switch stuff out once or twice a year. That way there wasn’t so much stuff out all of the time and it would make old stuff feel new again when it’s brought back out for a season.  Nope, she couldn’t do all of that. The arthritis in her back and neck would be far too much to handle doing all of that work.  Food, cleaning, exercising, and so on, just excuse after excuse. 

 That was more like MY epiphany.  I have, over the years, and thanks to the help of a friend, gotten rid of many of my excuses.  I learned the value in not BS-ing myself and I now have little tolerance for other people’s excuses – particularly if that is all they have to offer. This is not to say that people don’t actually have valid reasons, because I know they sometimes do. But I also know that often they do not.  This is also not to say that I don’t still have so many excuses of my own. I do. I do, I do, I do. It’s something I actually struggle with every single day.  I know that, like Michelle, I need to put my garbage away and push through the pain.  I need to stop hoping for that accountability partner and learn to use my own strength, my own perseverance. 

 I am learning and I am trying. Every day, I am learning and I am trying.