It is what it is and other recent words

I’ve been called a “word girl” more than once in my life, a description I can’t, and don’t want to, deny.  Words mean a lot to me and I place a tremendous importance upon them.  I love the way the perfect word can illustrate a point with vividness and accuracy.  Words can be satisfying, they taste good when I chew on them, they feel right when they pass my lips.  They’re stimulating in a visceral way…yes, I like words.  Here are some words and phrases that seem to have made an impact in my world recently:

“It is what it is.” It isn’t just me, is it?  Has this phrase been the “push the envelope” of 2012?  It’s crazy the number of times and situations that this particular phrase has been dropped in the last 6 months or so.  It’s such a meaty combination of words – so few letters, yet so applicable.  Each time I hear or utter it, I always get a feeling of acceptable irony as I reliably shrug my shoulders and turn my hands palm up in surrender.

“Choosing to love.” I read this somewhere in the past few weeks* and I’ve been thinking about it.  Is that what it is – a choice?  Doesn’t that suggest a certain amount of control in the situation?  And if it is a choice to love, does that mean  it is also a choice to NOT love?  Doesn’t that sound so tidy? Maybe that’s what happens ultimately to end a relationship – one of the participants decides that the return is no longer worth the investment and a choice, conscious or otherwise, is made to stop making love deposits.  Seems pretty reasonable to me.

And, finally, “grabbing the golden ring.” This is one of those phrases threatened to be lost from our vocabularies by the passage of time – they’re just not building carousels like they used to.  I was thinking about the term and it just kind of struck me that it is pretty damn near impossible to grab that golden ring if your ass is stuck in the saddle, unless, of course, you have an amazingly long reach.  Not to suggest that shiny gold bands are the ultimate goal in life, but riding around in circles, in a predictable up and down fashion, isn’t really the ride through life I’m hoping to experience.  And, after all, while it is what it is, life also is what one chooses to make of it.  Word.

*purposely vague about where I read it generally means the Huffington Post’s Divorce page.  Or the Daily Mail.