Can We PLEASE Stop Saying “Life Got in the Way?”
Because when we do, what are we actually telling ourselves?
There’s a perfectly good smoothie melting one foot away from my laptop as I pound out this post. A few feet farther is a book with the line: “And then, because of life, I somehow found myself exercising less and less…” which is as far as I got before tossing it aside and turning to the keyboard.
If you’ve known me for more than a month, you’ve likely heard me say “words matter” or bemoan expressions that do not mean what people think they mean. “Life got in the way” is now my third such rant on Medium. (You’ll find the other two at the bottom of this post.)
I understand, of course, what people mean with this expression. “Life got in the way” is shorthand for “I intended to do X but other things came up — perhaps priorities or perhaps just distractions — or something unexpected happened like an illness or injury and, well, I just never did X.” And yes, that’s a mouthful, but why should we blame life when we actually mean “I couldn’t make X a priority,” or “I fell and broke my arm,” or “my child was sick and needed my attention,” or “I learned I wanted Y more than X so didn’t do X.”
Unlike some of these actual reasons, life is something to be celebrated. Life is waking up each day with the…
