it is what it is while you only live once

We have all made bad decisions.  Recently I chose to watch some of   30 minutes of my life are now gone forever.  Another day I watched “Big Brother.”  Same outcome though at least I got a good nap out of it.

Real Housewives of Someplace (I believe they are all interchangeable).

We all make bad decisions.  But there is a new phenomenon.  A public declaration that our bad ideas are actually good ones.  We are not making ‘bad’ decisions.  Our bad decisions are merely striving for life.  Or so we claim.

The new terms of rationalization:  YOLO and “It is what it is.”  Now, the former seems to have passed its peak.  But, for quite some time,  I would always hear that phrase accompanied by a bad decision.  “Yeah, I poured lighter fluid on my thumb and put it near the barbeque grill…YOLO!” or…”Yeah, I had a dozen shots and went for a drive…YOLO.”  Just deal with it…you intercoursed up—you made a bad decision.  While YOLO is true, so is YODO=You only die once.

Now, my other peeve is “It is what it is.”  This is what I hear when defecation has occurred in one’s life.  “My (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, significant other, pet lemur) left me…Oh well, it it what it is.”  Or… “Yeah, I shaved for the eighth day in a row with an old razor and my face now resembles a topographical map of the Moon…It is what it is…” 

“It is what it is”—a phrase we use to publicly admit we will not give anything critical thought, we will not take responsibility for our actions, we will not accept fault for consequences to ourselves and others.  We don’t have to. Because it is what it is. 

I can’t argue the point.  Something certainly is what it is.  Zero will indeed equal zero.  Now God supposedly said something similar:  “I am that I am.”  (at least that’s what director Cecil B De Mille said in the Ten Commandments.)  It sounds cooler to say it if you’re God, or Cecil B.  De Mille.  Well, you are what you are and it is what it is.  And with this knowledge, we can….?

So, in conclusion,  what important lessons do we learn from YOLO and “It is what it is..”?  That occasionally all of us need something to say when we actually have nothing to say.  And we don’t want to think about it.