My daughter was an easy child to raise. In her whole 18 years at home, she maybe got sent to her room three times, and that might be stretching it.
That said, there was one thing my daughter would do that would drive me up the wall. I would say something, and she would roll her eyes at me. Oh. My. God. Just thinking about it turns me into Elmer Fudd with steam exploding out of my ears.
(I feel compelled to admit: I was a master eye roller with my own mother. Thanks, karma.)
I thought about this habit of hers and mine recently, because I’ve become painfully aware of another habit I have. I am constantly muttering “whatever.”
Now that I’ve become aware of it, I cannot believe how often I say it, and this makes me curious. Why do I say it so often? When, exactly, do I say it? What purpose does it serve?
If you are like me, you might say “whatever” when you’ve said or done something that you regret. Or when you’ve half-assed something or made a choice that will have negative consequences down the road.
You might also say it when you care deeply about something and get disappointed. Or when you’ve made yourself vulnerable and been met with crickets. Or tried your hardest and still failed. You might say it when you want to fight back against Life and the hand you’ve been dealt, or when you want others to answer for what they’ve done, but you know that will never happen.
According to the OED, “whatever” suggests a speaker’s reluctance to engage or argue, so it implies a passive acceptance, an indifference. Much like the eye roll, “whatever” often means a giving up, a lack of agency or control.
When we screw up, when we dare to be vulnerable, when we try and fail, when we get knocked down, it hurts like hell. “Whatever” is an anesthetic, numbing us to that pain, and to the fact that we usually can’t change whatever it is that has happened.
What do we lose, though, by resorting to passive acceptance and pushing those feelings away? What happens if we pause, breathe into that vexation, pain, embarrassment, or uncertainty, and say, “Hey. Here you are again. What can you teach me, right here, right now?”
Maybe it’s that trying or being vulnerable is good, in and of itself, regardless of whether we fail or feel exposed or not. Maybe it’s that we need to remember we can only control our own thoughts and actions. Everything else is out of our control. Maybe it’s that we are all human, so there will be hurts and messes and heartaches.
The list of things that can mess with our mojo is long. Some we do to ourselves. Others get done to us. If using “whatever” or some other equivalent helps you to survive, then go for it. I mean it. Life is hard enough. You don’t need to make it any harder on yourself.
And yet meeting those scraped-raw moments with curiosity brings not only a sense of possibility, but also a sense of power. Here you are, bruised, battered, facing the ups and downs of your life with active interest, learning what you can, beginning again, and moving on from there, hopefully slightly more wise, but definitely more resilient.
This is it. This is your life, your chance—to live, to love, to feel awkward as heck, to succeed, to fail, to shine. Live light, y’all.