I’ve been prevented from writing this post for months.

For newcomers, in the bad thinking series, I take our everyday common phrases and pick apart their inherent fallacies. I try to wait until I’ve gone at least a week without hearing the idiom before posting.

Which is why I’ve been prevented from writing this post for months.

See, I hear “it is what it is” from almost everyone.

Mentors, protégés, peers, family, friends, neighbors, enemies, strangers, people that’ve have spent too long in America and people trying to sound too American all say this, all the time. The phrase, “it is what it is,” is so commonplace in America that to challenge it seems like challenging e pluribus unum or something. I’ve finally gone a week without hearing it from anyone so no one will (hopefully) assume I’m specifically calling them out. I’m generally calling out the lot of us, because we always say this when something terrible happens. We could have a fender bender or our best friend gets divorced and we’ll say, “it is what it is.”

We sound like morons. Why?

Three things make this phrase ridiculous: grammar, metaphysics, and change.

Grammatically, we’re saying nothing.

It is what it is. Really? Well… I just… well then baseball bats bat baseballs. When we use the word in the definition, we’re stupid. Unless we’re drawing attention to something more through subversion. But if our redundant little phrase is intended to draw attention like the saying, “Writers write — if you’re not writing, you’re not a writer,” then we’ll move on to metaphysics (the old kind):

Metaphysically, we’re being vague at best.

It is what it is gets us no closer to understanding the problem, the environment of the problem, or the human life said problem affects. It is what it is resigns us to a vague admission that something, heck, anything exists right now. Everything and nothing contribute to whatever we happen to be talking about.

Which is ridiculous.

It’s like looking at a new species of flower and snorting or discovering a new planet and grunting and then moving on to our bag of Doritos. Being should surprise us, existence itself should shock us, we should not mildly pass by anything — especially pain — and passively resign it to an indefinite, amorphous, apathetic application of will and reason. Shock shocks us, and when it doesn’t, that should give us pause.

That kind of apathy is for shadows and silence. Silence is better still, for at least silence can metaphysically resonate with the pain in question. This is why the Jews sit shiva — they stand in solidarity with the suffering. The first three friends in Job? The best thing they did was to sit in mourning at the start of the tale. The worst thing was to add indefinite, amorphous, apathetic words to Job’s suffering. Beyond this, a resignation that “it is what it is” is the same as saying “this is all there is” which is nihilistic and suicidal, if followed to its logical conclusion. Unless you’re a consistent nihilist who really is suicidal, this phrase doesn’t fit into your philosophy or theology. We read fairy stories to remember that it isn’t what it is, it’s more. There’s stuff going on behind the curtain. There is seen.

But there is also unseen.

Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

– G.K. Chesterton

We’re denying the existence of change.

Change happens. At very least, resign to saying “whatever will be, will be,” because that phrase assumes change, though still in a dark, fatalistic posture (see above). Change happens. A stock market gets overbought (like now) and it crashes. A crash gets oversold and corrects. But people also affect that change — there’s a human or at least a personal cause behind change. People grow up or grow embittered, but they don’t stay the same. You cannot stay the same. Become like a demon of hell when you’re old or an angel of heaven, but you will not be what you are now. There’s life going on under the surface of the deep. It isn’t what it is, it’s more.

Now for the kicker: anyone who has any cause to hope has no place for “it is what it is” in their vocabulary. This isn’t just a Christian thing — this is a human thing. If you have any vision of the world as a better place than it is now, and if you assume that change happens, then you cannot resign to “it is what it is.” Whether or not you plan on involving yourself, there are forces at work beyond simple “it is what it is.” No, it isn’t what it is.

It’s more.

It’s bigger. It’s unseen. It’s pulsing with the song that’s sustaining all things. You look at a forest and you’ll see mostly living trees. You look at all forests, and you’ll see mostly living trees. You look at all worlds, and you’ll see mostly existence, not non-existence. We cannot resign to calling pain “it is what it is.” For, quite clearly, pain is a minority. We are mostly alive. We mostly exist. Suffering is not the norm, which is why we have such a struggle trying to understand its existence. If suffering was the norm, we’d question the existence of pleasure and heartbeats and the fetus.

The “It is” behind the universe calls things that are not as though they were. We might say “It Is calls things to be.” Or maybe, if you believe it’s personal, you might say “I am.”

You might.

But you wouldn’t, under any circumstances — if you’ve chosen to breathe your next breath — say “it is what it is,” for those are not the words of someone who choses to exist vibrantly within the created order, who knows that pain is not the norm, that things live and are born and thrive more often than they die.

The words “it is what it is” are no more than last words of one resigned to let everything exist outside himself, resigned to let himself cease to live, love, and affect what is.

photo via Horia Varlan‘s creative commons license on Flickr.