Directionally Accurate

A blog about whatever piques my curiosity… my thoughts might not be exactly correct, but they're likely "directionally accurate"

On Grass (and its Relative Shades of Green…)

Someone recently told me “The grass is brown everywhere.” A play on the “grass is always greener” saying. I kind of liked it, but it’s a tad pessimistic. I’d prefer amending it to a slightly less definitive “the grass has brown spots everywhere, but it’s still mostly green.” The metaphorical grass of someone else’s relationships, house, job, or life can often appear greener to us from the outside. You know this. That’s why the saying exists… and the problem lies more in perception than anything else.

It is easy to perceive someone else’s life as better than the one you’re currently living. When we look at someone else’s life we usually only see and focus on the best parts of it. Perhaps that’s all they want to show us or perhaps that’s all we choose to see while doing the exact opposite in our own lives. This has been amplified in recent years through social media where most posts don’t represent real life. They represent a curated snapshot of a life shared with the world. There’s a lot we don’t see. I have a lot of respect for those that try to provide a balanced representation of their lives. Even more respect for those that are able to see the beauty in those brown spots.

I think everyone’s “grass” has green and brown spots. Living in America (yes, we have it pretty good here…) at least in the social circles that I’ve found myself the overwhelming color of most people’s grass is green. If you’re as fortunate as I am to have the necessities of life, food, health, safety, and even a few close relationships with friends or family than your grass is pretty green. It’s just so easy to focus 90 percent of our attention on the inevitable brown spots.

When we look at someone else’s life we just see the green. The happy moments, the “perfect” looking relationship, nice home, friend groups, family, and vacations. We don’t consider and often don’t see someone else’s brown spots, but they are there. We don’t see them doing laundry and cooking after a long day, the work that goes into cleaning that nice home, the fights, the scared, worried, or anxious moments, boring or stressful days at work, more fights, screaming children, sad moments (or years), and all the other things that are so easy to dwell on in our own lives.

To continue the grass metaphor, if you look at golf courses on Google Maps, they all look perfectly green and manicured. The local muni golf course and Augusta National look more similar than different from satellite images. It’s only when we zoom in or you’re at ground level and see that your drive down the fairway at that muni is sitting in a divot on an aerated fairway that you see all the brown spots in vivid detail. If you don’t believe me look up Augusta circa 2020, mid renovation, on satellite images. Not very green. Maybe you’re just in a renovation phase of your life right now.

When we look at other’s lives, we’re only seeing satellite images of their lives and assuming that translates to a perfectly manicured fairway every day. Yes, there are even some people’s lives that look like Augusta. Maybe they’re members there? I’d be willing to bet they also spend way too much time focused on that one blade of grass out of place, the one weed sticking up through the green, the divots the pros are making, or the heathen fans that descend once per year on the course to enjoy inflation protected sandwiches and beer and leave burnt out spots and mud on the heavily trafficked walkways. No one is immune from this line of thinking.

Which life would you rather choose to live, one no matter how nice that others think is greener from the outside than you do, or a life (your life) that you appreciate more than others regardless of what side of the fence they’re on? I would want a life that looks greener once you’re invited over to my side of the fence no matter how it looks from the outside. Those are the people we all enjoy spending time with too.

So why don’t we do that?

Maybe it’s because I’m finally seeing grass daily after living in Manhattan for so long, but I’ve thought about this grass metaphor a lot during my travel. I’ve had many friends say they’re jealous of my experience, but I’m equally jealous of many aspects of their lives. To be clear, I’m thrilled to be able to do what I am right now. To take time off real work to focus on working on me. To experience new things, see new places, travel, learn, grow, and get to know myself better. To hopefully grow as comfortable as I can in my own skin. It doesn’t take much foresight to know that this time of my life will be one that I look back fondly on the rest of my life. It’s easier for me to focus on the green aspects of my life right now than other points in time.

Taking a trip like this includes the full range of emotion. All the wonderful things you would expect. Beautiful, new places to explore. The freedom to wake up each day and decide what I want to do. I can’t do everything I want to on this trip, but I do get to decide how to spend my days. I know that is an incredible luxury and likely a fleeting one.

I also drive alone (sometimes all day), I have no one to share most of these experiences with, I go to sleep and wake up in a tent next to only myself and a stuffed animal dog, and I eat most of my meals in solitude. It can get very lonely, but it’s where I want to be. While I’m alone most of the time I’m thankfully not lonely most of that time. It’s where I’ve chosen to be based on the decisions I’ve made and not everyone gets to say that. I’m very happy to be here even if it’s a journey I am taking alone. Maybe I don’t yet know exactly why, but I’m where I need to be. I think and hope most of us are where we need to be, we just have absolutely no idea why and what we’re doing moment to moment. It will only be obvious in the future.

I may be living a fake life right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect or that I don’t feel pangs of jealousy for other’s lives I visit during this trip. I can take this time off to travel first and foremost because I have the privilege of making this decision and money saved up to afford it. After that, the reason I’m able to do this is because of what I don’t have:

A spouse, children, or a home of my own.

All of these are things that many of my friends have in some capacity or combination. Sometimes all three and it can look “perfect” from the outside. I of course only see the fun dinners, companionship, inside jokes, and smiling children and not everything that happens after I stop squatting at their homes. I don’t really subscribe to this notion, but they’re also some of the things that I’m “expected,” to have at this point in my life. I can also say with 100% certainty there would be even more and different versions of these pressures if I was a woman. 23 year old me might have expected things would look a little different for us right now, but I also think I’d be proud and excited about what I’ve done and what’s still out there to experience. Besides, there are no rules to this thing called life.

There are times when someone tells me they wish they could do what I’m doing right now, and I want to tell them that I wish I had what they have. I certainly feel that way when I’m lonely on the road or just want a day to relax in a place I call my home. The same thing happens with those I see or talk to in parks and campgrounds. They wish they had the time or money to visit all the places I’m going to on this trip and I wish I wasn’t eating cheese and crackers alone by a fire each night. Camping seems a lot more fun when you’re not by yourself every night.

These life comparisons happen all the time. It’s just so much more pronounced right now for me because I’m living this “fake life.” There have probably been other points in my life where my day to day looked completely different from the way it does right now where people on the outside thought I had everything together. In some of those moments I felt like I did, others not so much.

Why do we always focus on all the bad things (even the insignificant things) in our own lives and only see the perfect green lawns of others? I know, I know, before I get any comments of “yeah, yeah, whatever wanna trade?” No, I don’t want to trade. I like my life in this moment. Trading lives is also not the point I’m trying to make either. It’s that if you didn’t have some of the things you’d (jokingly) be willing to trade away you would want them. Especially if you saw others have them.

You’d look at others and wonder if maybe they’ve figured it all out. Maybe that’s the life you should be striving for. Even if in that same moment your life had the things that a prior version of you wanted so badly. Maybe we grow and find we want something different or maybe we just don’t stop in our normal routines long enough to appreciate all we do have.

The point is not about trading or the actual shade of green of anyone’s life it’s about how you choose to view the shade of green in your own life. The only one you have to live. I hope at the end of this that I remember to find more enjoyment in whatever the next chapter of my real life looks like. In my life. In my boring, average days and not wish I had someone else’s. If those feelings help me to make changes to live a better version of my own life that’s great. If those jealous feelings exist just to make us feel worse about where we are in our own lives they provide absolutely no value.

Most of what I share on social media is beautiful natural landscapes with some dumb jokes mixed in to ground it in a bit of reality. If you feel the pangs of jealousy watching on a screen from the comfort of your own bed, possibly next to someone you love, with the comfort and stability of routine, know that it’s easy for the jealousy to go both ways. So, rather than that, we should all focus as much of our attention and energy on the green parts of our life. Nothing is forcing us to focus as much of our time and energy on the brown spots in our lives as we do. That is a choice.

“Boring” moments can actually be what brings us the sincerest joy and contentment if only we’d see them through someone else’s eyes. If that’s too hard to do, try to view them through your own eyes 10, 20 or 30 years into the future and think about how much you would give up just to go back and live in that moment. We’re blessed to have the present so let’s not throw that away in the moments themselves.

Finally, if you haven’t in a while, go outside and walk on some of that grass in your bare feet. If I’ve learned anything so far, it’s that time outside in nature, walking in the woods, or looking at a sunrise or sunset are free and easy ways to remind ourselves of the beauty in the world and to be grateful for this gift of life.   

Thanks.