That's the deal

Reader question:

Please explain “That’s the deal” – it’s the title of a song by Kathy Mattea, with these words:

There was a gentleman I knew

A stroke held his wife fast asleep

And his whole life had come down to

The vigil he would daily keep

I asked would he rather be free?

And this is how he answered me

That’s the deal, that’s the bargain that you make

That if better turns to worse you will abide

That’s the deal, if it were not for God’s grace

I might be there in her place and she’d be right by my side

That’s the deal

My comments:

Lovely, isn’t it? To have a worthy and deserving relationship like that – the bedridden wife is worthy and deserving of the care he is now giving him in natural return for the care and happiness she gave him before. I mean, that’s the logical conclusion I have – otherwise couples would’ve split long before that. About half Americans in big cities, and the figure is high here in big Chinese cities too, divorce at any rate, some more than once.

Anyways, originally the “deal” refers to your “hand” the handful of cards you have to play with in a poker game. You know, at the beginning of each game, the cards are reshuffled before someone deal out the cards to each and every player. And the cards you get become “your deal” for that particular game.

Good or bad, that is, that’s your deal.

Good or bad?

Yeah, obviously you can’t have all the trump cards to yourself and therefore you’ve got to deal with what you have the best you can.

Hence, the deal becomes, metaphorically speaking, the overall situation one finds oneself in, good or bad.

And hence therefore, you can understand “that’s the deal” as: that’s the situation, that’s the arrangement, that’s the bargain.

Or, using an even shorter American expression, that’s it.

Similar to the situation described above in the song of Kathy Mattea, an American country singer, is the experience of C.S. Lewis, the renowned British writer who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, among others. In Shadowlands, the movie, the aging (and previously very dull) Oxford Professor Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins), recounts his days with his young, passionate and spirited American wife, who died of cancer after three years of marriage, thus (or insofar as I can recall):

Why love

when losing hurts so much?

I don’t have the answers any more,

only my life’s experiences.

Twice, I have been given the choice,

first, as a boy,

then a man.

As a boy, I choose safety.

As a man, I choose suffering

because the pain is the happiness.

That’s the deal.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.