The Grass is Greener on the Other Side
Like, always.
Generalizations aside, it’s mostly like this — the single man looks at the married man and yearns to find his one true love and get married; The married man looks at the single men and yearns for his long lost solitude and freedom he once relished.
The poorer blue-collar looks at the wealthier white-collar and longs for one day when he can earn much more money and enjoy a comfortable life with his family where money is not a big issue; The white-collar looks at the blue-collar and longs for one day when he can at least make it back once to dine with his wife and daughter and not get caught up in overtime.
These are just some very broad examples about how grass is greener on the other side. Real life is a way lot complicated than that.
The human mind is a very weird thing. It likes to generate dissatisfaction in our own lives — what we don’t have, what we should have, what we want to have, what we once had. Perhaps it is in our evolutionary instinct to make us strive and work towards a greater goal, to create this need to change our current situation for something greater in the future.
We are constantly in pain, struggle, and agony — when we are in our jobs, study, and perhaps family. Not knowing that in this journey to what we want achieved, is where our happiness truly is.
We obsess on watering, fertilizing, and weeding this grass patch we have to look like the seemingly nicer one we see over the fence, not knowing that others are also tending, trimming, and shaping their grass patch to look like ours.
Everyone has flaws, every one has strengths.
As cliche as it sounds, what I’m trying to say is to really appreciate the grass that you already have, not everything is a race, a competition, because in the end the grim reaper always wins (I apologize if this sounds really morbid). Of course, there are many people who understand this and live by this, I just want to put it out for more people to see.
We focus so much on doing more for our future selves, often neglecting the fact that the current self is the past’s future self.
Sometimes the best time to relax, the best time to stop and look around is right now. Because in the end, no matter how green (or ungreen) your grass is, the cows are still going to eat them all, might as well roll in it while you can.
Thank you so much for reading! This article was originally published on Medium, 9 January 2016.
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