That's Life

I hate it when people say, "That's life." What's life? Give me a break.

It's like people saying, "Life isn't fair." Usually that means, "I'm being unfair to you, but there's nothing you can do about it." That's true enough, I guess.

The problem is, life is fair. Brutally fair. Just not necessarily always in your favor. People who say life isn't fair are just trying to give justification to their unfairness. When it's genuinely necessary to be unfair, it's usually not really unfair, just not necessarily fair in your favor.

See, "fair," means evenhanded, balanced. To say that life isn't always beneficial, or that it doesn't always favor you, now that's fair. But unfair? Life isn't unfair.

So, "That's life," usually means, "You should accept this bad situation without protest." Most of the time, that's just life being brutally fair. Things don't always work out. Things aren't always fun. That's life.

But sometimes, life is fair, but people in it are not. And while that's brutally fair (i.e. life doesn't presuppose any fairness on the part of the participants), that doesn't mean that you have to take it lying down. So you should ask yourself, the next time someone tells you, "That's life," whether or not that person is being reasonable.

It's a hard thing to swallow. Some people want life to always decide in their favor, so any time it doesn't, they think it isn't fair. But a lot of people are more reasonable than that, and sometimes when you think something isn't fair, it might not be. Doesn't change the fact that life doesn't charge a cover to keep out the riff-raff. But sometimes you can do something about it.

You'll notice that no one says, "That's life," after something good happens. You don't win the lottery and declare, "Oh well, that's life." But it is life, just like the bad things are life. So the next time someone tells you about something good that happened, tell them, in all seriousness, "That's life." And then come back and tell me that the words aren't biased toward the negative.

So is life really all that bad? Or are people that unfair? Do we really need to reaffirm the supposed unfairness and negativity of life all the time? Or are all the people who say, "That's life," trying to sell you something you don't want? Think about it.