It never ceases to amaze how some old adages keep ringing true.
The grass is always greener on the other side is a perfect example. The concept usually refers to wanting what others have, but it can also apply to wanting things out of our reach, or unobtainable.
One could argue this drives us to strive for more, but really it leaves us with a sense of longing and forgetting what we do have.
We always want what we can’t have it seems.
When we’re young, we want to grow up, once we’re there we look back wistfully.
When the kids are little and unreasonable, we wish they were easier to deal with. We also want them to SLEEP. Then they become teenagers and do reason, and we think about how much easier it was when they did what we told them at least! And of course, they never seem to stop sleeping.
If you’re short you want to be tall, curly hair we want straight. And on it goes.
I think the issue here is this – when we do have it good, we don’t know it. It’s like breaking up with someone, then seeing him or her with someone else who looks ecstatic, and they suddenly look attractive again.
It dawned on me when my child was a baby; it was all about routines, and stages. In mother’s groups the conversations all revolved around stages, and cycles. He’s in this stage or that and we accept it. We can see before our eyes how they grow so quickly. Their clothing sizes change before they can wear some things!
At some point when the visual is not so extreme, we seem to forget that stages exist at all. When the start edging towards the teen years and independence, the concept is nearly forgotten. Yeah sure, we see puberty occur, but we forget this is a phase somehow. We exclaim ‘they’re just being difficult’! Well actually no, they are in the next stage; and it too will pass.
Even as adults I reckon, we still have stages, they just aren’t so obvious. Every 7 years or so, life seems to just SHIFT. Things move, attitudes change, people outgrow each other, or jobs somehow just seem ‘wrong’.
I have learnt through loss, that those stages I tried to rush through, or the things I took for granted, were some of the best days of my life.
The amazing thing here is this means more can come if I open my eyes and see them for what they are. Good. Stages. Ever changing.
Losing something does not mean the end. It means a new stage is beginning, new grass is growing. It will have a few weeds, need fertilizing and mowing but it’s ours.
The grass in our backyard is our grass. It’s not better in the next yard or the next or the one down the road.