Never find an excuse for yourself

Here are two little stories.

This was a story in the war between United States and Spain. To win the war, the president of United States needed to get contact with the leader of the army against Spain who was hiding in the jungle of Cuba that time. When the president felt hopeless because nobody knew the exact location of the army, someone recommended Rowen to the president and said that Rowen was the only man who could do this task. So the president met Rowen and gave him the letter to the leader. Rowen took the letter and sailed for 4 days on a small boat along until he reached the shore of Cuba. He only one person walked through the jungle in three weeks and finished the task. The main point was that when Rowen took the letter from president he didn't ask the question : 'Where is that leader ?' He just took the letter and finished this impossible task. Actually, that leader' name is Garcia and this story is well known by the world as 'A message to Garcia'.

The similar story also happened in the movie 'Saving Private Ryan' . In World War Two, the commander John got a mission to find a solider whose name was Ryan in the mess battlefield. This solider was the son of an old mother. This mother' husband was dead and she had four sons, but three of them had already died in this war, Private Ryan was the only son left. The military wanted to find the last son in order to save the last hope of this family. The same as Rowen, this commander John accepted the mission though he didn't know where the Ryan was. At last the whole saving group died including John but the successfully saved Ryan.

Rowen and commander John in these two stories all accepted the impossible mission without any excuses. They just accepted it and did it and finally succeeded. In the real life, we always try to find some excuses to be the reasons of shirking from the difficulties. Never find an excuses for yourself, face the problems directly, that's the thing we should do.

In the West Point, when the commanders ask their students a question, students only can give one of the four answers. 'Yes, sir','No, sir', 'I have no excuses' and 'I don't know.'. The commanders there only care about the result instead of the reason you haven't finished the tasks.