TARDINESS - HABIT VERSUS HELPLESSNESS

I wake up every morning with one single goal: punctuality. Yet, day in and day out, I fail to achieve it. I have been called tardy many at times. However, there is one little corner of my mind which has never accepted it. I question that little corner every night. I am still waiting for an answer reasonable enough to satisfy the world.

Tardiness is probably not one of the worst sins that a person, an employee, to be more specific, can commit. Yet it can be nerve-wreckingly irritating, infectious and incurable at times. I can be reasonably named a habitual offender. But when it comes down to pointing a finger at the blameworthy factor that makes me tardy I have only one explanation: contributory tardiness.

Let me start with the first factor – my restful mind. No amount of fear, tension, shame among others can make my mind acquire a mindset that waking up early can solve the problem of tardiness. I have tried harshly educating it, coaxing it, forcing it but nothing has worked yet. When my mind slips into the sleep mode it listens to none, reacts only to my helpful room-mate who has successfully managed to pull me out of slumber-land every morning for 6 months now.

Second in the list is my great luck. Luck has managed to ignore me for 24 years now and is still going strong. When my mind acts tameable my luck runs out and then follows a successive order of incidents to contribute grandly to my tardiness; things urgently needed go mysteriously missing, water runs out, electricity acts aloof, clothes bluntly refuse to look ironed, shoe straps break, bag zips die unnatural deaths, room-mate kills me with her unnecessary and highly avoidable banter, transport shies away from me and to top it all the boss catches me sneaking in late.

The third factor on my list is time. It is the third not because it is any less blameworthy than the others named above but because the concept of time has always eluded my comprehensive capabilities. Time and I have had an unbridgeable communication gap since April 12, 1985 and alien-like weapons of teen destruction like time management and planning used by parents often shattered my day-dreaming brain. My estimations of time have always failed. Attainment of adulthood has not helped and yet I dream of those times to come when we (time and I) can bury our issues and live happily ever after.

To conclude, I am guilty of tardiness. I am helpless, I am a pawn in the diabolical games played by time, luck and my own brazen mind. I repent and seek forgiveness every night before I close my eyes only to be declared a sinner next morning.