People try to get off the hook by giving excuses. Actually the reason why they are doing that is to try and get rid of the guilt which invariably accompanies such acts. They are trying to lessen their burden by passing on the responsibility on to others. They mix up excuse with reason. An excuse is an excuse and most certainly not a reason.. Be careful while accepting excuses because you may unwittingly take on responsibilities which were not yours in the first place.There’s another type of excuse- the one you give to yourself. You don’t want to get up early in the morning, or you don’t feel like exercising, or you don’t want to mow the lawn and so on, therefore you will try and justify your action on the pretext that you slept late or couldn’t sleep properly or you have some imaginary ailment or the sky is overcast etc. Actually you are trying to get rid of that guilty feeling of not doing what you ought to have done.