Many years ago I had a boss who could drive me crazy with just five little words: “It is what it is.” He said it all the time. And every time I would think, “It doesn’t have to be what it is. Are we not working in local government to make things better?” Oh, how naïve I was.
But then tonight I watched Michelle Obama’s keynote speech on the first night of the Democratic National Convention:
Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what is.
It is what it is. Aha! As Michelle Obama clearly displayed, the power in this overused, trite phrase is knowing when to invoke it.
The Japanese have a phrase, shikata ga nai, meaning “it cannot be helped.” Which I realized could be translated to, “It is what it is.” My Nisei grandma would often say a shortened version of this: shō ga nai, and I admired it as evidence of her toughness, that even in the face of difficulties which she was powerless to do anything about, she persevered.
This is a foundational Japanese belief. It’s how my great-grandparents, grandparents, and mom persevered through the difficulties of plantation life on Maui. But at the same time, my great-grandparents must have believed that some things could be helped because they took the giant leap of immigrating to America.
I have never been able to embody shō ga nai. I’m always wishing for things to be different, always disappointed when theyʻre not. Case in point: since election night 2016, I have been hoping for some alternate reality where Donald Trump wasnʻt president. I am a champion lamentor, but imagining what things would be like if Hillary Clinton won doesn’t change our dark reality.
Now, deep into pandemic times, Michelle Obama has sounded her clarion call: yes, there are some things we can’t change: a terribly indifferent president, active voter suppression efforts. So, it is what it is. But there are things that we can change, and one of them is to vote and show up with “passion and hope.”
Because of some silly logistical issues, I didn’t vote in the recent primary election. It is the only election I can remember missing since I turned 18. My parents have always taken voting very seriously, and don’t even tell each other who they voted for. I see now I need to take it seriously too. The vote is the seed of democracy and opportunity that I imagine my great-grandparents immigrated to America for. And in 2020, our lives truly hang in the balance as we decide whether or not to exercise it.
Photo from Vox