Life is what you make it

A cliche of debatable validity. On one side, this phrase may be seen to be reassuring, allowing a person to accept the ills of their life, whatever those might be, with grace, knowing that with effort, or wisdom, those ills can be surmounted, or even changed into something positive. On the other side, this meaning can be seen to be irrelevant; the phrase ultimately becomes empty, asking a person to acquiesce to, in the form of the acceptance of "the good with the bad", the ill of the modern world in any or all of its forms.