As a kid growing up on the farm, one of the things I had to do was to feed the calves. Either milk from a bottle or pail, twice a day. Great way to learn responsibility: if you forget to feed them, they bawl like crazy. If you leave it TOO long, Dad ends up doing it, and that's NOT something you want to have happen.

It also taught me something else, though. The reasons I might come up with, especially as a kid, for NOT doing my chores, whatever they might be, don't matter. If you don't feed the animals, they complain, and eventually bad things happen.

Life is like that all over the place, but somehow, having REASONS for things happening has become more important than understanding the WHY for something needing to be done.

As a football coach, one of my biggest peeves was players showing up late to practice. Now, sometimes a kid has a prior commitment (I know I was late to football practice twice a week because I was also in the jazz band). Most of the time being late was an EXCUSE (couldn't find my cleats, I had to stay late in Math class, etc). Regardless of the reasons, that player is MISSING valuable practice time, and will be less prepared to play on game-day. All the reasons for being late to practice? They don't actually matter. If some other player is more prepared, they are more likely to be successful.

On my team, being late meant hills after practice, and not just for the kid who was late, the WHOLE team ran. The players let me know how they felt about that (loudly), but I never had to explain to them what it costs when one guy rolls in ten minutes after everybody else.

What I have observed is that, perhaps in the last few years, actually SHOWING UP to things has seemed to become almost optional.

When I was directing a musical in 2023, one of the phrases I came to dread hearing was "Am I needed for rehearsal?" I understand that some folks had to come from a distance, and some parents were bringing their kids and it's a lot of work, but these are the same parents who were so happy to have their kid cast in a show. When it came down to it, the reason for missing a rehearsal didn't matter to me. As far as the director is concerned, if you're not there, I can't really work that scene properly. Presence matters.

This is something that definitely triggers leaders in general, the whole notion of someone being PRESENT. A bum in a seat. I think a lot of the "Return to Office" initiatives are centred around the anxiety of wondering what someone is doing all day in a remote environment. When someone just shows up, we are reassured that they are going to be productive. It's kind of in our DNA.

Yes, I know how this all sounds coming from someone whose whole company is remote. Remote work is, if you think about it, one giant accommodation of everybody's REASONS for not being in the room. I get that. But we did give something up when we went remote, and I don't think I get to pretend otherwise.

It feels like sometimes we are more anxious to find reasons for why things are happening than actually dealing with what's happening. That's a fear-based mentality, in my opinion; we become desperate to understand WHY because we are afraid of whether something will happen AGAIN. Fair enough, but fear is usually an unhelpful companion when we need to actually deal with the world.

Back to my original point: reasons don't matter.

Let me be clear: reasons explain things, they just don't UNDO them. If you tell me why you're late, especially if it's reasonable, I'm likely to understand. But the practice was still missed!

In life, we give ourselves excuses for so many things. We allow ourselves to ALMOST succeed in so many areas. We may fill our lives with explanations for why things are not going the way they should.

My own worst one is that word right there: ALMOST. I almost got it done, I almost got there, and somewhere in there I start treating the ALMOST as its own reason, like getting close is the same thing as dealing with it. It isn't, but it sure feels better.

And of course, there ARE reasons and explanations, sometimes unavoidable. The fact of the matter though, is that, regardless of WHY something happened (you're late, you made a mistake, you never showed up, whatever) the consequences of that still need to be dealt with. And looking for the reason can feel like you're doing something about it, which is maybe the most dangerous part. It didn't matter WHY I forgot to feed the calves. They're still hungry!