We have an ongoing argument with my stepdaughter over her chores. We tell her to do them, but she refuses, so we tell her to do them again and she refuses to do them again, on and on into infinity. On a good day she might simply look at us and say ok and then walk off in the opposite direction. On a bad day, it results in a total meltdown, complete with screams and accusations about how she never gets a break and a slammed door. To some extent, this is to be expected. On the one hand, she is on the autism spectrum and processes demands or requests in a wholly different manner from a neurotypical child. On the other, she is a middle school girl and hormones are all over the map. These things are frustrating in their way, but they are not something that she can really control and we make every attempt to be understanding and work around these struggles.
The frustrating thing, and the part that she and I talked about this morning, is when there is something she is perfectly capable of doing but she won’t do it and makes deliberate excuses for not doing it. The part where no matter how we try to incentivize her doing these chores, whether it be a punishment of some persuasion for not doing them or some kind of reward for doing them (allowance for example), it is pointless. She just simply will not do them.
The excuses are myriad.
This morning, she told me that she had not cleaned her room because the mess was big and would take a long time. As I listened to her reasoning, it occurred to me that she was simply stating the facts and using them as an excuse for inaction. “The mess is big, so I cannot do it.”
I do not think it is far-fetched to think that we are all guilty, from time to time, of doing much the same thing. Under the disguise of having an honest excuse for not taking an action that we know is necessary, we state the enormity of the task itself as if that is reason enough to take no action whatsoever.
The example I used when having the conversation with my child was climate change. We know, we have verifiable evidence, that humans have contributed to the rapid warming of the climate since the beginning of industrialization. You could say it is entirely human-caused or that it is a part of the natural cycle of ups and downs and people have had a negligible impact, but either way, humans have been a part of the whole phenomenon. We also know that there are actions and steps that we can take to reduce how much we are contributing to the problems associated with increasing climate temperatures, even if one person’s actions are not going to have a significant impact.
This truth can be looked at in two ways.
One way is to look at it and say all of humanity contributed to this problem and so it is going to take all of humanity working together to have an impact. Since all of humanity is not working together to even try to curb climate change, and my actions are not going to make a sizable impact, then it is pointless to even try. So I am going to keep doing what I am doing, which is nothing.
All of the reasons cited to defend inaction are true. But the way that truth is being used is misleading. It is misleading to others, but it is also misleading to ourselves.
In using the truth as an excuse for inaction, we are perpetuating a system of inaction and failure on our part. We are causing ourselves to be stuck in the same place and preventing ourselves from ever changing the world, even our own individual world.
This is not limited to big-picture issues like climate action. But at an individual level, we are all susceptible to the temptation to use truth as an excuse for inaction. It reminds me of a scene in the early 2000s cartoon “The Amazing World of Gumball”. The kids are making excuses for not doing their chores and Gumball makes a comment about how cleaning is weird because you are just moving today’s dust out of the way to make room for tomorrow’s dust.
What is the point of doing the dishes today if there are just going to be more tomorrow? What is the point of making the bed if you are just going to be unmaking it again in a few hours? What is the point of losing weight if I am just going to have to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe? I cannot pick up my dirty laundry because it is going to take a long time. I cannot scrub the toilet because it smells funny. I cannot give up that friend group because I will have to find a whole new set of friends.
Infinite excuses for not doing things that have the potential to make our lives easier or better. Infinite excuses for not doing things that are going to lead to us being the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be.
And now we find ourselves stuck.
Trapped in a cycle of inaction and excuses and inaction that just ceaselessly piles up and leaves us stagnant and hinders our own growth.
I am currently reading Steven Furtick’s new book Do the New You. I have not read a spiritual self-help book in a long time, probably since I began deconstructing and reconstructing my faith. Maybe even a while before that as well. The book centers on six, many of them Jesus-centered, mindsets for living into the person that you are meant to be.
The first one has stuck with me the most so far. “I’m not stuck unless I stop.” That is what using the truth as an excuse for inaction is. It is getting ourselves stuck because we are choosing to stop. We are choosing stagnation over growth.
Which leads me to the second way we can view the truth.
We can see the truth as unchanging and therefore live into the world we want to live in. Do you like having plastic bags and food wrappers all around your house? Find ways to reduce how much packaging you use. Do you like spending hundreds of dollars a month on gas? Instead of complaining about it, find ways to use less gas. Are you changing the world? Not at all. But you are changing your world and making your world a little better. And that is when you can share that truth with others about how pleasant your world has become since you made a few changes to your lifestyle.
WIll there be more dishes tomorrow? Probably. But they look like shit today so you might as well have a clean kitchen for a little while. Same for making the bed, doing the laundry, and scrubbing the toilet. Will you have to buy a new wardrobe if you lose a significant amount of weight? Undoubtedly. But you wll be able to update it into a style of your choosing instead of staying stuck with the same old clothes you always wear. Plus, you can donate the old clothes to someone else who may have a need for them and contribute to making someone else’s life better.
You see, the truth can be a motivator or deterrent. If we want to improve our lives and, by extension, the lives of others, then we need to view the truth as the former instead of the latter. This might require some work. It is going to require a change in mindset. It is going to require some potential lifestyle changes. But it is doable. And absolutely necessary.