Is it Good to Say “It's All Good”?

According to my research, the phrase “It’s all good” began in the rap world, probably with Hammer’s rap song of that name from 1994. A New Yorker article by Rebecca Mead, discussing this phrase and its history, goes on to say, “it has now been adopted ironically by upper-middle-class white people, in whose parlance ‘It’s all good’ is usually a way of preemptively closing a conversation.” Mead goes on to say that “the most widespread use of [the phrase] seems to be among people who have recently discovered yoga and meditation.”

As my background as a meditation teacher brings me in contact with the people Mead refers to, I may tend to hear the phrase more often than most. I don’t know how widely it is still being used. In the face of the very real tragedies and difficulties our whole society is facing, it becomes harder to wave it away by saying, “It’s all good.” I usually hear it from people who are telling me about some personal reversal or difficulty, ending with a forced smile and the words “but it’s all good.” What they really mean, I think, is it’s not all good, not at all, but they’re going to put the best face on it and keep soldiering on.

So is “It’s all good” a kind of Pollyanna-ish form of denial, or is it putting a backwards spin on an unpleasant reality by calling it good when you really mean bad? I’m not sure, but I have to confess that something about the phrase rubs me the wrong way. As Mead says, it means “every reversal […] is also an opportunity for personal growth.” I actually don’t think that’s true. I remember a friend whose dog, to which he was deeply devoted, died a painful death. He recounted to me all the sad details and ended with “It’s all good.” What I noticed about his emotional state is that he did not seem to be grieving. He was, rather, floating on “It’s all good.” Was he saying that the death of his dog was somehow an opportunity for personal growth? It was certainly an opportunity for grief, but it seemed he hadn’t yet connected with the sadness of losing his beloved companion. I suppose this is what it means to say that the first stage of grief is denial. The reality is too painful so we paint it over with a brighter color that we can stand to look at.

A psychiatrist friend of mine once remarked that without denial as our most powerful defense mechanism, human beings could not stand the suffering they often must endure. I’ve learned that the latest brain research posits that denial is not just a psychological coping mechanism, it is actually a neurological process. The brain arranges to block the neurological pathways to the painful memories so we can cope. Evolution probably selected for people whose brains arranged to do this. Because of denial, we survive.

These days we are seeing a lot of misinformation and outright falsehood about all manner of things, especially on social media, and perhaps we should consider that these messages are a very public form of denial. Racism, for example, is a reality. Ask anyone who is the victim of it and they will tell you, often in the starkest terms. Yet there is a continuous drumbeat of denial and deception saying that it is not so– racism doesn’t exist. Wouldn’t we all be better, and wouldn’t society be better, if we simply faced the truth of it and worked on ways to lessen it and change it? Undoubtedly so, but that seems not to be the way the human mind works.

Climate change is another ripe topic for misinformation. “The weather is always changing, it’s all good.” No, it’s not.

The list could go on and on.

In these trying times, it seems that many people walk around cocooned in their individual cloud of denial, or “alternative facts” as some say. Without a shared, agreed-upon reality, how can we communicate? How can we even argue or disagree? Is it really the case, as some would say, that there is not a single, objective shared reality, but only the subjective spin we put on it to make it palatable? If all we can say to each other is “It’s all good” when we know that’s not true, and the person you are talking to knows it’s not true, then we are lost in a funhouse hall of mirrors where nothing is real, nothing can be relied upon, and no one can really connect with anyone else.

I’m imagining what it would be like for people to start using a different phrase: “It’s not all good.” Yes, it’s not all good and is not going to be good any time soon. I have a feeling that, if pressed, most people would agree: it’s not all good. The only thing good about that phrase is that, for a change, we can actually begin really communicating, with our feet on the ground. Real change, real improvement, can begin on that ground: yes, it’s not all good, and we need to do something about it.

Then we could actually say, “It’s all good” and have it mean something.

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