Life is Good

Nearly every morning while driving to work, I see a Jeep that has a spare-tire cover with the phrase “Life is Good” on it. At first it seemed virtually meaningless to me. “Good” is such a bland adjective—it doesn’t really tell you much. Dinner was good; the movie was good; the child was good. Life is good.

Because it’s on a Jeep in a beach community, I picture the driver as a youngish man with a surf board stashed in the back seat. The words, written in a whimsical, happy font, have a definite surfer vibe to them: “Dude, life is goooood.” I guess it’s what life looks like viewed through the double lenses of marijuana and adrenaline.

But the more I see this Jeep, the less happy the phrase seems. It has become insistent, even overtly political. The driver purchased the “Life is Good” tire cover and drives around with it in the faces of all the other people on the road—almost like a poster at a political rally. “Abortion is Murder”, “Vote for Orrin Hatch”, “Life is Good”. All the Monday-morning drivers, regardless of their daily miseries and tragedies, are compelled to meditate on the phrase “Life is Good.”

Does he think he will change minds—that he will convert the depressed to his own philosophy of happiness? Is he truly oblivious to the shards of pain these words can cause? Or is he merely gloating: his life is good. Aren’t we pleased for him?

But then, perhaps it is simply meant to celebrate the fact of life: the oxygenated air that envelopes our planet, the microbes, the green plant life, the penguins, the pelicans, the mushrooms, and the mosquitoes. Our carbon-based existence is good.

Life is…what? I once knew a woman who would say, “Oh, life is hard” in response to any bad news. So how would you finish that sentence?

As for me, I would simply say: Life is.

—Heather