What's Your Excuse?


Recently I was contacted by the author of a book I had just reviews. Now, I’m not a great reviewer, I just give my honest opinion. This particular author had a stroke a decade or so ago, and his autobiography was lacking of quite a few things. So what he said was that knowing about his stroke, I shouldn’t expect a grammatically correct text. He said something like, “you can’t expect me to look into all that.”

Now when I blog no one goes through my post before I ‘publish’ it. No one corrects the spelling or grammar, and I rarely ever read through what I write. When I write articles, it’s a completely different story. I read through it, and so do many others. A text, anything at all, that gets published must be good enough to be published. A blog requires just a single click to be published; it doesn’t count as a text as such. I’m not a writer just because I blog, it doesn’t make me read-worthy. And yet, when I see a spelling mistake, thanks to spell-check, I correct it.

But yes, I’m of sound mind, I know enough English to write and I’ve never suffered of anything life changing. My life was never turned upside down; I never had to learn everything all over again. Yet, I can make excuses. I could have said I didn’t fair well at my O/Ls because it was a rocky time at home. I could have said I didn’t pass my A/Ls with flying colors because I had just switched from the Sinhalese medium to English.

I could have made all these excuses, but I didn’t. Because you can’t make excuses in life! Looking at the author of that book, well, sure he had a stroke. Sure you can’t expect him to know perfect English. Yet, he can’t use his stroke as an excuse. Why couldn’t he get someone else to read through it? What stopped him from getting a friend to read it?

People also use their misfortune against others. I’ve seen many posts showing people with various disabilities, followed by the words, “what’s your excuse?” Well, my excuse is that I don’t need to be climbing Mount Everest; I don’t need to be writing book after book. I don’t need to swim across the oceans. I am using my two good eyes, ears, hands, arms, legs! I don’t just sit at home doing nothing. So sure, it’s great that you crossed borders even though you were born with nothing below the knees. But you can’t expect us all to be climbing mountains and what not!

This doesn’t mean you should be making excuses about everything. I’ll do it later; I’ll get back to it. Don’t make those excuses! But don’t make those other excuses too. I had a stroke so don’t expect me to check my spelling. I had cancer, so don’t criticize my book.

Simply put, shit happens. It happens to everyone, in one way or the other. Just don’t use that as an excuse.

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