The Grass is Always Greener
About 2.5 years ago we moved into our first home. Moving in at the end of the Summer meant that I was not prepared for the number of weeds that would emerge in our yard the next Spring. For three seasons now, I have crawled through our lot on my hands and knees, pulling out each weed one at a time. We have sprayed, we have re-seeded grass, and we continue to enjoy the hobby of making our lawn nice to look at and live on.
This past week, as I was watering the newly laid grass seed, I stared over at the lawn across the street. A very nice couple just moved in a few months ago and unlike the million dandelions that we unknowingly purchased, they moved in to beautiful lush green grass. It made me think about the phrase the grass is always greener and the comparison game we tend to play.
Another neighbor might look at my lawn and think their grass is greener than mine, not realizing how much work I put into it. My grass is greener because I water it and work at it. On the other hand, when I look at the lot across the street I think their grass is greener than mine, and they were just lucky. They haven't worked for it at all. They just got it when they moved in. Of course, if they want it to stay green they will need to maintain it and might even work to make it better than it is now. I am not here to say lucky people don’t work hard, but rather that where they are starting is very different from where I started.
The point my rambling thoughts are trying to make is that it's not worth our energy to try and compare our lives to those around us. It’s easy to think someone else’s success is because of their luck. And ya know what, sometimes it is. Some people have advantages in this world due to their gender, sexual orientation, skin color, or inherited financial circumstances. Some people just get green grass by being born. Others, though, have green grass because they water it every day. They work at it. They foster it.
We should continue to fight for equal opportunity in this world. It is not right that some start so far behind others for reasons that have nothing to do with their abilities. While we do that though, while we fight for things we cannot fully control, we should work on the things we can control. We should pull the weeds. We should water the grass.
What's one thing in your life right now that is like a weed to your personality? Maybe you are quick to anger. Maybe you are prone to gossip or talking poorly about others. Maybe you drink a little too much coffee and not enough water. Most likely there's more than one, but just choose one this week and try to pull it from your life. Take out that one bad thing and make some space for the good stuff to grow.
