Greener Grass

I’m sure you were all expecting Part 2 of Relationship Bants! Lol, sorry to disappoint guys, I will post it, but just not today!

You know what they say about delayed gratification!

Okay, so to today’s post. For the majority of last week, I struggled with feelings of “everyone seems to be having a better time than I am” 🙁 .

I was comparing myself to former classmates that had gotten married, classmates that got new jobs, classmates that seemed to have had amazing summers etc. And there I was . . . going to my \”8- whenever I close job\”. Doing experiments that for some unknown reason kept failing, marriage nowhere in sight. (not that I really want to be married right now, but still) No chance of a new job for at least 2 more years and summer is over, so no amazing summer for me this year! 🙁

As you can see, everything in my life paled in comparison to what everyone else seemed to be doing, and it was hard to not be depressed or to not compare my life to theirs and feel like I got the short end of the stick. 

I wish I could say I “slapped myself” and got out of those feelings just like that, but it didn’t happen that way.

I had to have conversations, with both myself and other people. I had to remind myself why I do what I do, and why my life is just as good as anyone else’s.

It’s very easy to think the grass is greener on the other side. It’s easy to look at others and feel inadequate to the people around you, but you shouldn’t, and there are many reasons why.

For starters, you don’t know personally what they are experiencing. I have learnt that social media life can be as real as it can be fake and it is often difficult to determine what is a stunt and what is the reality. Another thing I have come to learn about the grass on the other side is that it is rarely ever the kind of grass I like. It looks good, but if I am completely honest with myself, then I have to admit that the things I am envious of, are not really things I am interested in, which raises the question of why am I jealous of those experiences in the first place! 

Human nature is always searching for more. Day in, day out we want more. We are hardly ever satisfied, and I think that’s why the grass often always looks greener.

So, what do we do about that? How do we deal with this illusion of greener pastures?

Honestly, I think everyone will deal with such issues differently. However, one thing we can do is when we are tempted to look at other people and think less of our positions or accomplishments, we need to remind ourselves of why we started in the first place and why we have stayed all this while. We should have those conversations with ourselves and the people around us that reaffirm what we already know about ourselves and the things we have. Because as human beings, we love affirmations and reaffirmations. 

So, yeah… The grass does often look greener, but your grass probably looks greener to someone too, and maybe if you pay a little bit more attention to the good in your life, you’ll see all the greenness that others see in you!