Remember when you were in High school and all you could think about was: ?I will be happy when I finally graduate so I can escape this hell hole and I can finally do what I want to do with my life?.
Now I don?t know about you, but nowadays I catch myself thinking ?I wish I was back in High school so I can get back to the easy days and escape this hell hole called adulthood.?
Fuck my life?
It?s a common thing to always think about things, people or places that might seem better then what you are facing with now. That feeling of never being satisfied.
?I want to quit my job and apartment and travel the world just like my buddy Adam.?
?I?m traveling the world but I want a job and a nice apartment just like my friend James.?
?I?m living the single life but I would love to be in a relationship like Sandra and Chris.?
?I?m happily married but sometimes I just wish I was single so I can just sleep around with somebody else each weekend.?
Does that sound familiar? That feeling of thinking no matter how amazing your life is, someone always seems to have what you want. It?s never enough.
The phrase. ?The grass is always greener on the other side? is a common expression. It refers to the way we look at different people and different situations and always think that what we have is not good enough. That we can and should have a better life.
Basically thinking your life would be better if it were in different circumstances.
Whilst in reality, this is hardly ever the case. Sure if you are stuck in a warzone in Syria the grass is most definitely greener in Central park, New York. However, when it comes to personal situations you are facing, you are most likely looking through rose coloured glasses.
We tend to think that we need to have a better relationship in order to feel happy or that we need a better job in order to feel respected.
These thoughts make it feel like our lives suck but believe me, your life is probably pretty damn good!
Here are some stats that might make you think differently about your life:
Around 792.50 million people in this world are undernourished.
783 million people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation.
About 70 million children world wide don?t have access to basic education.
800 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat on a day to day basis.
Do these stats make your life a bit more bearable? They probably do.
Do these stats make you feel any better? Probably not.
Weird right?
We are afraid to miss out on anything.
There is so much information available for us right now that it is impossible not to dream of better places. No matter how good your life is, one click on Facebook and you will see a friend that ?has it better then you?.
Television, reality shows, Instagram, Facebook and movies show us all images of what we can only imagine to be a perfect life. Marketing and advertisements have been in our world for as long as anyone can remember but it has greatly increased over the years and will only continue to do so.
We become restless. We can?t be happy with what we already have because we are presented with so many choices that we are constantly looking for the unknown in an endless quest to find happiness.
We are confronted by these endless amount of choices and if we don?t make a choice this can become highly stressful.
This makes it even harder for ourselves not to compare our lives with that of others and it keeps up the illusion that ?the perfect life? is out there for us to find.
Little girls look up to Kim Kardashian believing that her life is something to be jealous of. Always pretty, rich as fuck, cool friends and amazing parties.
But this is simply an image created by miss Kardashian that makes 15 year old girls believe that their lives suck if they don?t start dating a famous douchebag that believes he is Jesus resurrected ASAP.
The funny thing is you might look at things as better or worse. But it hardly ever is! Media and commercials only paint a picture that your imagination takes over and it will create a vision that is not real. Your expectation is hardly ever what reality actually is.
But these thoughts usually come from two feelings. Fear and fantasy.
- The Fear of missing out.
People are scared to enter a relationship because they are afraid they are missing out on ?the perfect? person. The person that has the perfect career, the perfect body, the perfect mind and just loves puppies.
Same goes for looking for a job, an apartment and anything else. We fear that we are missing out on something better if we commit to anything. The fear of settling down.
2. Fantasy
Most people have the perception that if we change the things around us our lives will be better. This is why you see people who have a midlife crisis buy a mercedes that they don?t need or middle-aged men exchanging their wife of 30 years for a 18 year old bombshell.
We want to run away from our lives and escape to our fantasy land. A land that is in our minds but in reality is nothing more then just a illusion of what life could be. Losing control of reality is dangerous. Reality can hurt like hell but a fantasy never has negative repercussions.
When we say that the grass is greener on the other side, we?re usually (if not always) projecting our own unhappiness or our dreams to outside factors. A bad partner, a shitty career or just boring friends.
The grass is always greener on the other side, always searching for another high ? Ludacris
We tend to believe that by changing external factors, we fix the problems that are deeply rooted within.
It may feel like this is the case for a short period of time, but this ?high? you feel when you change something will wear off just as quickly as you gained it.
So now what?
The problem is that changing external factors will hardly ever change the issues you are facing from within (Deep talk Tony).
It is foolish to compare relationships, places or objects. Everything is special in its own way and nothing and nobody is perfect. Everything has its bad things just as much as everything has its own uniqueness that made it special to begin with.
There are people out there that say that the true secret of happiness is wanting what you already have.
I like to put it like this, instead of believing that the grass is always greener on the other side, you should try and nurture the grass you already have. After all, the grass is greenest where it is watered.
Are you in a bad relationship? Work on it.
You have a job that makes you feel like shit? Ask yourself why and see if you can fix it.
Your neighbour?s grass may seem as green as it can be but only when you get close you realise your own piece of grass wasn?t all that bad to begin with?
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