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361. Why Life’s Going to Life

Posted on June 21, 2025 by caritagardiner
Screenshot 2025-06-21 at 2.34.34 PM

I bought a T-shirt with the image above many years ago as a baby present for a friend who named her kid Henry. Just kidding, she named him Tate. If you know a Tate and/or like potatoes, you can click on the photo above to get to where you can buy the shirt.

I still think the shirt is funny. The original version of the expression, I think, is "Haters gonna hate," but I've also heard it with "players gonna play." A quick internet search reveals some other rhyming lines that already exist in the world.

But the version I heard recently on a podcast was "Life's going to life." Technically, this sentence doesn't make sense because "life" isn't a verb and doesn't have an infinitive form. That said, I think the meaning of "life's going to life" is obvious, so the English language moves forward as do we.

Though I don't always love the defeatist nature of "It is what it is," I can get behind the message of "Life's going to life."

This line seems like a good reminder that we don't have total control. Things are moving and happening without our say-so or control all the time. It's not always perfect, but it's always better than the alternative. We should be learning to roll with what happens, to embrace the chaos and busy-ness as it comes because life's going to keep lifing around us and to us and within us, and we're so lucky that it is.

Has life lifed you recently? Please share any responses in the comments.

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WHAT I DO

I serve as a class dean and teach English to high schoolers at a boarding school in Connecticut. I’ve earned a Bachelor of Arts (Amherst College), an Education Master in Learning and Teaching (Harvard University Graduate School of Education), a Master of Arts in English (Bread Loaf School of English), and most recently a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a certificate in the online teaching of writing (Southern New Hampshire University).

As a writer, I hope to capture the complexity and joy of life in the New England boarding school world. On this site, I share what I know about trying to write fiction while deaning, teaching English, coaching, and doing the other tasks associated with helping to raise over six hundred other people’s children.

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Read my recent “Why” Wednesday Blog Posts

  • NetGalley Review of Destination Weddings and Other Disasters
  • 339. Why Pan
  • NetGalley Review of The Summer You Were Mine
  • 361. Why Life’s Going to Life
  • 338. Why Find Your People
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