‘It is what it is’. How many of us have heard that? How many of us have said that? Do you use it sometimes? It is a common enough phrase, we hear it every day. But what does it mean? What are we trying to say?
When we look at it, ‘it is what it is’ sounds like an acceptance. ‘Well that’s the way life is’ or ‘that’s the way it works’. We hear it every day, about kids, politics, traffic.. Did you ever come to work and say ‘man on the way in today someone cut me off’ and get the response ‘people are just rude, it is what it is’? How often do we hear about someone or a total stranger or waitress being rude and we just say ‘people are like that you know, it is what it is’? But where do you draw the line between acceptance and resignation? When does it go from ‘that’s the way it works’ to ‘I can’t do anything about it so…’.
In January 2012 Travel & Leisure magazine published an article America’s Rudest Cities. The list may surprise you a little:
10. Orlando – The article said “Apparently, being family-friendly is different from being just friendly.
9. Baltimore
8. Phoenix/Scottsdale
7. Atlanta
6. Dallas/Fort Worth
5. Boston
4. Los Angeles
3. Washington, D.C.
2. Miami
1. New York City – Did you see the movie Ghostbusters II? In it the Mayor (played by David Margulies) said “Being miserable and treating other people like dirt is every New Yorker’s God-given right.”
Even though that was a punchline, people often use this line of thinking to justify their actions; their behavior. ‘Well, that’s just the way I am.”
There is another movie, the 1997 movie Contact starring Jodie Foster. A little setup, in most of the movie David Drumin (played by Tom Skerritt) was Ellie’s (played by Jodie Foster) boss in one way or another. He didn’t have much respect for her line work; but once she made a discovery he maneuvered himself so he took the credit and finally got to go on a mission she had dreamed about her whole life. Here is an exchange between them just before a test run of that mission.
David Drumlin: I know you must think this is all very unfair. Maybe that’s an understatement. What you don’t know is I agree. I wish the world was a place where fair was the bottom line, where the kind of idealism you showed at the hearing was rewarded, not taken advantage of. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world.
Jodi Foster said. (Ellie Arroway): Funny, I’ve always believed that the world is what we make of it.
Wow! Hold on to that just for a moment… Think about that…. “I’ve always believed that the world is what we make of it.”…
What if it is that simple? What if instead of saying ‘it is what it is’ we honestly thought ‘the world is what we made of it’.
Okay, we have a movie theme going here so let’s try another. Who saw the movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe? Even though the movie was fictional, some of the characters were real people from history. Remember Caesar at the beginning of the movie played by Richard Harris? That was Marcus Aurelius (121 A.D. – 180 A.D.) In real life Marcus Aurelius wrote a book called Meditations and in it he said “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one”.
Let’s think about just those two thoughts for a moment.
- The world is what we make of it.
- Don’t argue about being a good man; be one.
How do we do that? Have you ever heard the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’. A long time ago Aristotle (384-322 B.C) wrote a book about ethics for his son. One of the recurring themes was about excellence and how we achieve it. He thought the best way to achieve excellence was doing something so often it became a habit. Isn’t that what a habit is? Isn’t a habit something we’ve done so often we do it without thinking?
So let me ask you a question. Have you ever practiced just being nice? Seriously I mean actually, practiced it. What if the next time you’re driving to work and someone tries to squeeze in, how about slowing down and letting them in? Or the next time you see a guy trying to cut in line, why not say ‘here, in front of me’? The next time you see someone stressed say ‘relax, what can I do to help’.
A very close friend of mine once told me :
Too often we worry about the ills of society rather than the ills in our own individual lives. We should realize and remember that society will change when we change; we are people and people make up society.
It isn’t about them, it’s about us, about the choices we make. It is about what we do. It is about what we do… both to and for others. What can we do to make the world a better place?
So instead of saying ‘it is what is’.
Remember that the world is what we make of it.
The world is what you make of it.