Life Happens: Redefined

On the way to school this morning I saw a billboard advertising some kind of financial service and it read something like, "Foreclosure? Life Happens. We can help." I thought about what that was implying. In this case, "life" is being associated with something negative. There is another phrase used like this in which case life is replaced by an expletive... "@#*% Happens". Do you see how that's kind of odd that we're using the two synonymously? We only ever hear this expression in the case of negative things. I was thinking about other times I hear this kind of phrase. The French phrase, "C'est la vie," is an equivalent with translating to something like, "That's life." When do you ever hear that phrase? I think you only hear it in the context of submitting one's will to God or the universe and in sad acceptance. I think that knowing that life is not defined only by the negative, we should start using it in both good and bad cases...it should be a kind of neutral. I'm reading Slaughter House Five and in it, somewhere on practically every other page, there appears the phrase, "So it goes." So it goes is neutral. The author, Kurt Vonnegut, uses this phrase after telling all kinds of stories...war, post-war, growth, death, all... That phrase doesn't make a judegment call, good or bad or right or wrong...just is.

I submit that we create a change in the phrase, "Life Happens". Why don't we respond with "life happens" when something positive happens. So, "Hey, I got a raise at my job!" Or "Female friend fell in love with male friend and now they are getting married!" Or "Healthy baby boy was born to couple such and such!" Yeah well...life happens!