Don’t Just Say “It Is What It Is”

A while ago I was talking to a friend who was having trouble at his job.  He felt overwhelmed with work and his manager wasn’t helping, and things were getting worse because of some massive disorganization within his company.  He and I talked about his problems on a long car ride, and at one point he heaved a heavy sigh, leaned over the wheel, and said, “But, you know, it is what it is.”

Another time I was helping a different friend make some renovations on his basement.  We were doing trim work and cutting two baseboard pieces that met in a corner.  The pieces didn’t fit at all and looked so bad that no amount of caulk and paint would hide the gap.  My friend looked at the woodwork, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I’m not too worried about it.  It is what it is.”

Then, two nights ago, I went down to my apartment basement to do some laundry and my quarters got jammed in the dryer.  I first tried pounding the coin slot to loosen it, then when that didn’t work I got a screwdriver and tried to free the mechanism, but that didn’t work either.  (A lot of cursing was involved with these steps.)

Somehow I finally got the damned thing loose, but then the dryer wouldn’t turn on and my money was gone, so I tried putting in more quarters only to have the same thing happen again.  (This provoked another round of cursing.)

That’s when I brought my laundry upstairs and hung it out to dry on every chair, doorknob, cabinet, and curtain rod I had.  The next morning I texted the landlord telling him to fix the dryer and asking for my four dollars back.

The landlord said he’d take care of it and return the money.  If he doesn’t, I’ll ask him nicely again until he does take care of it.  (More updates to come!)

 

OK, What Does Your Wet Laundry and a Measly Four Dollars Have to Do With Anything?

I’ve been hearing the phrase It is what it is a lot recently, though I’m not sure if this is because it’s come into fashion (like people saying Yeah I know right! with fake enthusiasm) or if people always said it and I just never noticed.  I often heard a similar sentiment expressed when I was in Japan, since the Japanese use the phrase Shō ga nai to describe a situation that’s outside of their control.

In any language, though, I don’t like it.

I don’t like it because It is what it is implies a hopeless resignation about a situation, an awareness that some problem has occurred and that there’s no use in trying to make it better, so we may as well accept it the same way we accept other things outside of our control like sudden snowstorms or sports team losses.

The problem is, what happens when we start treating things that are really inside our control like they’re outside our control?

There’s no doubt that I had the ability to do something about that broken dryer, so I did—first I tried to fix it myself, then I tried to fix it again, then I hung up my wet laundry and texted the landlord.  I was driven by a clear goal (Obtain dry laundry now and in the future!) and took steps to achieve it.

My friend who saw the bad baseboard joint could have taken similar action, but he looked at the problem and chose to believe that there was nothing that could be done about it.  He didn’t think about recutting the pieces or trying a different fit because he assumed that it was outside of his control to do these things.

 

My other friend who’s having work troubles took a similar stance: instead of thinking of ways he could talk to his boss, plan a new work strategy, or even find another job, his natural instinct was to view the problem as outside of his control, which then led to his not taking action to fix it.

 

Woah Woah Woah—You Talk a Big Game, But How Do You REALLY Know What Problems Are Outside of Your Control?

That’s the thing—a lot of times you don’t, especially with complicated problems or problems you’re encountering for the first time.  In these situations your initial reaction means a lot: do you start by assuming that you have control over the situation, or do you start by saying “It is what it is” and resigning yourself to the way things are, which then prevents you from coming up with a solution?

This goes back to that idea of Attitude and how our outlooks on the world can either send us shooting upward in new exciting directions…or keep us mired in a miasma of mediocrity because we don’t think there’s any way out.

Maybe the phrase It is what it is bothers me so much because it implies the circumstances around us are fixed and that we should accept them as a natural part of life even if they’re not what we really want.  I thought about this a lot during my India trip, since this mindset keeps people locked into the social class they were born into.  Accepting your situation as fixed means that you’re less likely to aspire to greater things outside of that situation—including dreams of making your creative work grow and inspiring people.  (You know, the kind of dreams that drive me forward every single day.)

It’s also downright dangerous in situations when laws are being broken or people in power are doing things they shouldn’t.  Saying “Oh well, it is what it is” stops you from looking at the situation and saying, “That’s wrong, so let’s start by acknowledging that it’s wrong and then taking action against it!”

And that’s how bad people in power get away with bad things.

 

One more counterargument before we go—Life’s really difficult, so shouldn’t we acknowledge certain things as outside of our control to protect ourselves from painful stress and unhappiness?

Life definitely sucks sometimes, and shitty things happen kind of a lot.  A natural response to these shitty things is to denote them as being outside of your control so that you don’t have to worry about fixing them, since there’s no use in worrying about things you can’t fix.  This means that you feel better and have less stress, and doesn’t that sound great????!!

I guess it does…if you’re the kind of person who likes avoiding problems and pretending everything’s hunky dory all the time when there are really underlying problems waiting right below the surface of that cheerful everyday world.

I guess living in a blissful world of It is what it is would make you feel better in the short term—until all the problems you avoided had built up so big that they started collapsing all around you over the long term and your life became pretty terrible.

However, if your basic instinct is to say “It is what it is” and not even try to change your situation then you’re risking building a life where you never take action on anything and surround yourself with terrible jobs, ugly basement molding, and yes, wet clothes and broken dryers.

Do yourself a favor and make your first reaction to a problem be something like “How the fuck am I going to make this better?” because that gets you thinking, planning, and moving toward a solution instead of just letting the thing lie.

Maybe I’ll never get that four dollars back from my landlord, but in the end I don’t really care about that.  What I do care about, though, is that I tried, and that I took steps to get that four dollars back, and that makes me feel good about my ability to tackle bigger problems that will make my life better in more significant ways.

If you want to make a better life for yourself, you have to do it all the way.

Don’t look at small stuff as being outside of your control.

Don’t say “It is what it is.”

And don’t lose your landlord’s phone number.

 

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