Is This All There Is or Does It Get Better?
Let’s Keep Dancing Just in Case
I’m a pragmatist. If I get 70% of what I want I call it a good day, but even I must remind myself from time to time that life wasn’t designed with my happiness in mind.
If you’re too young to remember Peggy Lee, then I urge you to listen to the above tune, Is That All There Is? If you’ve been around long enough to remember the singer and the song, I invite you to take a stroll down memory lane. I was 18 in 1969 when Peggy’s performance was recorded.
Controversial back in the day, the song made a lot of people feel uncomfortable. Others claimed that it was possibly the most life-changing song they’d ever heard. I read the comments on YouTube. They covered the range from one extreme to the other. A song with such brutal lyrics sung in a rather deadpan voice yet hauntingly beautiful and eerie, in my opinion, captured the essence of what it means to face life and still find a way to keep dancing. Below you’ll find the lyrics if you’re interested, or you can just do yourself a favor and listen to the song above.
Is That All There is?
Songwriters: Jerry Leiber / Mike Stoller
I remember when I was a little girl, our house caught on fire
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me up
In his arms and raced through the
Burning building out on the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas
And watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over I said to myself
Is that all there is to a fire?
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is
And when I was twelve years old
My daddy took me to the circus, the greatest show on Earth
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads
And as I sat there watching
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what, but when it was over I said to myself
Is that all there is to the circus?
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is
And then I fell in love
With the most wonderful boy in the world
We’d take long walks by the river or
Just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love
Then one day he went away and I thought I’d die, but I didn’t
And when I didn’t I said to myself
Is that all there is to love?
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep
I know what you must be saying to yourselves
If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me, I’m not ready for that final disappointment
Because I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
That when that final moment comes and I’m
Breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is
Life is often so brutal that humans can’t wrap their minds around it.
In fact, our brains are designed in such a way as to refuse to accept the raw version of life most of the time. That’s probably a good thing. After all, when nothing is what it seems, nobody is who they claim to be, and no place is completely safe, you can become overwhelmed with reality.
Truth is stranger than fiction. There’s no question about it.
Years ago, I was at a Safeway store with my mom and encountered Henry Hite, the world’s tallest man. His fame was based on his height of over 8 feet. I don’t think my mom took us to the grocery store to see Henry. He just happened to be standing there as the Corn King, dressed in a royal cape and crown. People gathered around him in a circle to stare and he was paid to allow them to stare. I remember thinking that life was kind of weird and that humans were even weirder. I was in kindergarten at the time.
I don’t know if I was a precocious kindergartener or not, but it was around that time that I started noticing how unpredictable and cruel life could be. I also started to observe humans doing what humans do which turned into a lifelong interest in the behaviors of my own species.
Humans still baffle me.
I’ve come to see that many behaviors are predictable. If we only paid attention, life wouldn’t be such a surprise. But somehow humans tend to try the same thing over and over hoping for different results, so nothing changes.
And we’re constantly surprised by our strange and cruel behaviors.
The visual of a circle of people, from children to old men and everything in between, gawking at Henry Hite in the parking lot of a Safeway grocery store stuck with me.
Peggy sings about ordinary things leaving her unimpressed.
From falling in love to a fire burning down her family home, the refrain — is that all there is — goes full circle, reminding us that often life is unfulfilling at the least and traumatic at the worst.
I’m not fully able to express my sentiments on this topic.
The song does a much better job. It needs the words enhanced by the music and then delivered with Peggy’s style to pierce your heart.
We’re all in this together, folks.
Whether we want to believe it or not. Why do we waste so much time arguing, competing, fighting, and hurting one another?
Around the time that I saw Henry dressed as the Corn King, I asked my mother why people couldn’t be nice to one another.
She had no answer for me, but she tried to offer an explanation. Something about there are good people and there are bad people in this world and that I should stay away from the bad people. My mom was only in her early twenties at the time and already dealing with the mental illness of my father. Little did she know that she had a lifetime of that ahead of her.
Later, I developed a thicker skin.
Life demanded it. I started accepting life as it is rather than resenting it. At age 71, I still wonder what makes people do what they do, but I stopped expecting it to improve years ago. I try to cut people a little more slack if you know what I mean. Maybe we’re all doing the best that we can with the hand we’ve been dealt. Still, life is weird, isn’t it? In the words of Peggy Lee:
Is that all there is? If that’s all there is, my friend, let’s keep dancing. Let’s bring out the booze and have a ball. If that’s all there is.
I don’t drink but I’ve learned to dance.
Teresa is an author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
