Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Children use excuses. Adults speak candidly.

Children love to use convenient excuses. Adults state what is actually happening. Some people call that being “blunt” or “candid.” I tend to like “candid.”

Convenient excuses allow us to “be nice” and talk around situations instead of facing them. Candor, however, exposes the real issue and allows us to work through the issue.

An odd thing about this is that some of us approach a situation with an attitude of, “I don’t want to hurt so-and-so’s feelings, so I’ll just tell them fill-in-the-blank-with-a-convenient-excuse.” That is so adult of us to ease the pain of another. Isn’t it? Well, it is probably arrogant because we “adults” know that those other people can’t deal with adult things – not like we “adults.” So we use childish excuses.

Funny, in trying to be adults we act childish.