Excuses always lead to a reckoning. We find reasons not to take that first step out the door, just as we find ways to be - or not to be - our best. Weakness, doubt, and fear are parts of the human condition. Facing them instead of fabricating an elaborate ruse to sidestep them - hoping to avoid them but ultimately carrying them in our hearts and mind and psyche until they whittle away at our being - give us a direct route to hope and dreams. Along the way, we reap all those other by-products that make suffering a tonic for our souls.