It Is What It Is
The phrase above seems to be in high circulation around me lately. People I know and love, as well as some I don’t know or love, keep uttering it in my presence. Makes me feel like the Universe is trying to tell me something, or prompting me to start asking annoying questions, as I am prone to do.
Metaphysically, it has a zen vibe: “The challenge,” young Master, “is to be with being.”
Ontologically, it’s kind of empty: Things and situations have temporal essences. This doesn’t tell us much about the logic of being or the meaning of life. Socrates would probably shrug, then hitch up his toga and launch into a long dialogue about something interesting, while his boy toy made google eyes.
Epistemologically, I don’t think it has a theoretical backbone. But after years of teaching it, I’m still trying to figure out what an episteme, or logic of knowledge, is.
Personally, I’m just not sure what to do with it. And maybe that’s my existential/epistemological/ontological problem (or non-problem; it is what it is).
My mom has suffered most of her life with a chronic cough, a nasty demon of a thing that stubbornly rears its head after every supposed cure that the doctors prescribe. “It is what it is,” she says on the phone, and moves pleasantly onto the text topic. So: resignation, acceptance–at least for now.
“I love my husband and I’m not going anywhere. This is just part of it,” says a friend. “It is what it is.” Translation: He is who he is, I am who I am. I accept that some baggage comes along with the combination.
Somtimes circumstances get in the way of a really good love. I keep hearing E. and I say it out loud: “It is what it is.” The Universe doesn’t always feel fair, but that’s life. Suck it up. Is this reassuring or reason for antidepressants?
And then there’s:
“Our country is run by a dimwit imperialist asshole who wasn’t legitimately elected…twice. Oh well; it is what it is.”
See, that’s the stuff that makes me wonder, because it seems like there’s an extremely fine line between acceptance and complacency, between just-being-at-peace-with-what-is and apathy. If someone tells you you’re sick (and I’m thinking of a few people some of us know who are dealing with cancer right now) do you go, “Okay. Well, it is what it is; I’ll just let it run its course, and whatever’s gonna happen’s going to happen,” or are you like, “Hells no, I ain’t gonna be takin’ that crap right now! Nobody gonna break my stride/ nobody gonna slow me down, oh no, I gotta keep on movin’…” (Sorry.) I find myself thinking of the survival stories, the cancer-overcome stories, the tales of POWs and flood survivors, and it seems like on some level they didn’t just accept the situation; their vision was on the transcendence of it, on life beyond it.
But maybe that’s not true. Maybe the survivors are the ones that say, “okay, so this is what it is; I accept that, but it’s not always going to be like this.” Better than freaking out hysterically until you die, or just being in denial.
So while I understand the value of accepting the reality of a situation, I also wonder if we don’t use “it is what it is” as an excuse sometimes for not taking more agency, for not being as much recipients of life, passengers on a journey, as journey-makers, creators of our lives.
But being is being whether we resist or accept. That’s an ontological fact. And maybe we can do both usefully. And that is what it is.
Also, if this was too heavy for you, click here for a lighter moment.
