It’s become the catchphrase of our era, a kind of filler that people carelessly throw into conversation. It’s easy to say and has a self-evident logic that leaves people nodding, because what else is there to do? After all, “it is what it is.”
I’m not sure when I first heard it, but now I can’t remember the last time a day went by and I didn’t hear someone say, “it is what it is.”
And at first I thought the expression might carry a bit of wisdom; the expression reminded me of that prayer about accepting things you can’t change. I used to see it as a kind of yogic mantra, a salve for the anxieties of the Lululemon Age: “Don’t hold onto things that serve no purpose. Om…”
But more and more, it seems to me to be a clarion call for apathy. More and more it sounds — coming from the mouths of the people saying it — like surrender: “This is our burden; I give up.”
The expression has been around for a while. According to New York Times columnist William Safire, it was first used in 1949, but really came to popular usage after the release of a 2001 film titled It is What it Is.
I wonder, though, how those who have exhorted us to “make love not war,” “give peace a chance,” or “question authority” would feel about “it is what it is.” Are they scratching their anti-establishment heads wondering how we all came to give up? How were we beaten into submission?
And how depressing it must be for young people to say and hear that entreaty over and over? What do they hear in that phrase? What are they saying when they repeat it? It’s no surprise that — en masse — they opt out of political involvement and activism.
Have we any modern-day Romantics? Do we have any Bob Dylans and Percy Shelleys? Where are the people today singing “There’s a battle outside/And it is ragin’/It’ll soon shake your windows/And rattle your walls.” Or anyone longing to “Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth /Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!”
It seems that when we, as a public, are faced with bullying corporations or corrupt politicians we’re not taking to the streets; instead we’re cowering and hiding behind our own impotence, like Prufrock we only ask, “Do I dare/Disturb the universe?” After all, it is what it is.
