Filter Coffee #105

On C'est La Vie

From Atlanta, Georgia

Dear Readers,

Thank you for the reviews and comments. Much appreciated. Many of your comments were related to promises that politicians make effortlessly and randomly, but which are never kept. In that sense, they are like pie crust, easily made and easily broken. Murali says that the most common pie crust promise that men make is “I will come back soon from work”. I second that, having made that promise myself multiple times. 

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️ C’est la vie

C’est means ‘that is’ and vie means ‘life’. This French expression is pronounced as ‘say la wee’. It means ‘such is life’ or ‘that’s life’ and can have a connotation of ‘life is like that, an expression most of us use in a variety of contexts.

Our lives are full of surprises and disappointments. Not all surprises are pleasant. Some can be disillusioning. If someone says, ‘I never made any promise’ contrary to the promise he made, you may be disillusioned by the retraction, which may also mean erosion of trust. If a cricket team lost a match which they were clearly winning, you would perhaps say, “I am surprised they managed to lose.”

Disappointment, as the word suggests, is a sense of personal disenchantment. If you say ‘I’m disappointed that my son could not get high grades in the entrance test’ you are experiencing a sense of loss.

Sometimes, we find ourselves in situations over which we have no control. We resign to the fact that what follows is inevitable. Imagine a young aspiring cricketer who is tipped to play for the country. He is on cloud nine. Unfortunately, during one of the practice sessions, he goes into a tumble while trying to take a catch and suffers a shoulder injury that rules out the possibility of his inclusion in the playing team. Overwhelming disappointment slowly morphs into one of resignation and to fate. The player and those commiserating with him would say c’est la vie, that’s life.

There are people who are unable to live with disappointment, and they rave and rant as to how unjust and unfair life has been to them and how they have been dealt a raw deal by fate. Such people find it difficult to introspect and fail to realise that life does not go on predictable lines. For them, it is la vie est injuste — life is unfair.

The disenchantment that follows a disappointment can make a person wallow in self-pity and be envious of others who have succeeded under similar circumstances. There’s something positive about c’est la vie as opposed to la vie est injuste. The former keeps hope alive, while the latter induces a pall of gloom.

C’est la vie is not about abject surrender, but is about giving oneself a second chance. The person who misses the bus does not throw themselves under it, but makes a second dash to get on board. C’est la vie is not about being negative. If the young cricketer told himself “Well, this can happen to any other aspirant, life’s like that”, he would not be going down bawl street.

Confronting something unfortunate that one has no choice but to accept is the essence of C’est la vie. In Covid times, for example, many businesses were shut down, many jobs were lost and many people ended up saying ‘life is like that’. When things began to look up and businesses were revived and jobs restored, people would say life has come a full circle, C'est la vie.

People also use ‘life’s like that’ to commiserate with someone else’s misery. If a celebrity in any field goes through peaks and troughs, we read about them, and we mutter to ourselves ‘well that’s the kind of life that celebrities end up living’. ‘You win some, you lose some’ is a good example of c'est la vie.

All of us, regardless of the field we are in, do get carried away when something dramatic, bad, frustrating or unexpected happens to us. If we look at that occurrence in a dispassionate way, we may come to terms with it and be able to ascribe it to the many strange ways of life that are all too familiar.

Resilience is another reason for people to say ‘that’s life and life must go on’. After the 2001 attack on the twin towers in New York left Americans in a state of shock, and a pall of gloom prevailed for some time. In 2015 when there was a terrorist attack in France it within days the French sat at restaurants and went about their daily life — c’est la vie was their way of responding to the tragedy. The two tragedies, both deplorable, are not being compared, but what is being compared is the response to that tragedy. 

Emotional resilience does not permit a c’est la vie attitude because people who are emotionally resilient can deal with stressful situations and generally deal with life’s ups and downs. It follows, therefore, that being resilient does not mean wishing away the problem but dealing with it and getting on with life.

Indians have a fatalistic attitude. The majority believe that when something happens, it is preordained and nothing much can be done about it but to accept it as c’est la vie. This attitude is more pronounced when an unhappy event occurs. Speaking for myself, during my corporate career I flew across the country and across the globe and each time I heard of an air crash I would tell myself that if it happens to me, it is destiny and so, c’est la vie.

This brings us to the question: do we have no control over our lives except to say ‘life is like that’? Confucius is believed to have said, “life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated”. The modern version of this quote might be: ‘life is really simple, but social media has made it complicated.”

One should not be saying c’est la vie if:

• One did not succeed in a competitive examination for want of intense preparation. 

• One married, mistaking infatuation for love, and it turned sour.

• One chose to babysit grandchildren, but was not required when they grew up.

• One gifted away property to the son and found himself in an old age home.

Please add to this list, if you wish.

I came across this story, and it is sure to resonate with many businesses and individuals in the country and elsewhere. Read on:

Colleen & Michael Bowman opened a store on the 5th Avenue, NY and called it 

C’est La Vie. It had many loyal customers as the store offered high quality gifts and clothes, among other things. This was in May 2001. And then in September 2001, the twin tower attack happened. The store struggled to survive and almost shut down. Resilient as the couple were, they re-opened the shop and for the next 20 years they ran the shop and won the admiration of a lot of people, not just about the store but for the charitable activities they undertook. When the global pandemic struck the world and lurked in the background for over two years, the store had to be shut. When asked why, the couple would not give any reason but were content saying “C’est la vie”.

On the musical front, UB40, the British Band of the 1990s, recorded a song “C’est La Vie”.

Drawing the attention of the world to the political injustice and extreme poverty in Jamaican Islands. The lyrics are poignant. Sample this:

“A woman came and said to me

She had a husband on an island

Found his body on a wasteland

Soldiers came and took him

Just to torture her you see

All alone she mourned her lover

Crossed the sea to find a brother

Who could help get her baby back for free

C’est La Vie.”

Dear Readers, If some of you liked this post and some did not, I will tell myself “You can’t please everybody. C’est la vie.”

I’m unsure of FC #106 hitting your in-box on the 4th of August as, from now until I board the plane to Bangalore on the 4th, I will not have much time between packing and playing clown for my granddaughter. If I cannot make it, see you guys on the 11th of August. 

Take care & be safe.

Pras