It Is What It Is. Except When It’s Not.
“It is what it is,” goes the latest business buzzword. Sounds profound, until you start to think about it. The profundity comes from the Biblical description of God speaking to Moses when Moses asked for His name. “I am that I am,” the Bible says.
Or, perhaps more irreverently, Popeye, of spinach-eating fame, used similar words to describe the inevitability of his condition, “I yam what I yam.”
After listening to about 500 repetitions of the phrase, I’ve discovered several meanings. Most commonly it means, “Drop the subject,” followed closely by, “I don’t care, and I’m not talking about it any more.” It is
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clearly a conversational door-closer.
In a few other variations, it can mean, “I don’t care,” “interpret it any way you want,” and “things aren’t going to change.” Occasionally it means, “Because I said so, that’s why.”
“It” is never defined, but I’m of the opinion that ‘it’ is hardly ever what it is. Otherwise, we’d define it. ‘It’ might be what it seems, or ‘it’ might be what I want it to be, which is different from what you want.
One person breaking off a relationship with another and not motivated to give a reason will sigh and say, “It is what it is.” In that case, it has replaced the kinder, “It’s not you, it’s me.” The poor pronoun, no one will name it.
For all the different uses, the real meaning is one of laziness or confusion. We use “it is what it is,” when we don’t know what the exact situation is, when we don’t have an explanation and when we don’t want to put effort into thinking, explaining, reasoning or solving. It would be more honest to say, “I don’t know what it is,” but that invites a criticism.
So we stick with “it is what it is,” a safe, bland evasion of truth, caring, or logic. At its best, it’s sloppy. At its worst, it’s a lie. In either case, it’s time to move away from the saying. It is not flattering to our culture or to the language.
–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach and a writer. See her work at QuinnCreative.com
Too funny, Quinn. That phrase makes me cringe, too. I had never read any meaning into the phrase; I just thought the speaker was lazy and repeating a speech fragment they heard on TV somewhere.
After reading your blog, I thought, hey, this would make a great addition to the Lake Superior State University’s Banished Words List (they publish the previous year’s banished words and phrases on Jan 1 each year). Anyway, when I went over to look, the phrase in question was already there!
If you want a chuckle, check it out: http://www.lssu.edu/banished/
Vicky F
—Thanks, Vicky, everyone should bookmark that site. It’s great! –Q
Vicky Ferguson
July 7, 2008
Sounds like a phrase one could have great fun with:
Replacement: “It isn’t what it is.”
Response: “No, it’s not.”
Query: “Why would you think that?
Commentary: “That depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
Putdown: “I’m not surprised you think so.”
Academic putdown: “Sorry, but from both a Kantian perspective and in Derrida’s view, that’s just naive and wrong.” (note: previous sentence is 100% meaning-free; just meant to sound snooty)
Inscrutible reply: “Not yet, but it looks more like it does now than it did when I first found out about it.”
–These are really funny, Pete. They should be given to everyone who uses “it is what it is.” -Q
Pete
July 7, 2008
Hi Quinn. I like that you challenged a buzzword because I find that these things seem to creep into our everyday language and culture seemingly without challenge and suddenly many are using them without contemplation.
This one I’ve heard for a quite a few years. And I agree that I’ve often heard it used in the context of disregard. However, I myself have used it but not in that context. I’m quite analytical and questioning by nature so I tend to examine situations/issues from various angles and request others’ perspectives on them. And, sometimes, I get to a place where I simply don’t have an absolute answer I can hang my hat on. At that point, I have said the phrase. For me, it was not a “giving up” altogether (and certainly not disregard because I’d already spent considerable time reviewing the situation/issue) but, I think, a respectful way of shelving the idea until I got further inspiration (which, incidentally, doesn’t always come!). Kind of like saying “live and let live” only related to an idea/situation/issue.
My two cents worth because I don’t think it’s necessarily always a negative thing to say.
mags
July 16, 2008