The Grass Is Always Greener, But What If You Don’t Like Grass?

LECHEROUS ADVICE

Dear Lech,

Is the grass always greener on the other side? –Allergic2Grass 

As you drive around whatever town you’re living in currently, I assume you look around and overall try to find the interesting parts of the area, right? This is my way of going around that pesky question of am I a pessimist or optimist? As long as I look for what sticks out in my world, something that I haven’t quite seen before, the path that my stone is rolling on will accumulate all this muck and turn itself into a tyranasourus rex sized testicle of stone cold fearlessness.

We all must at some point in our every year, month, week, day, or minute think to ourselves “hmm, is this earthly location really where I want to or should be to maximize the best out of my tortured soul?”. The old comeback is always to say that the grass is always greener, when most times it definitely isn’t so. My short life story on this subject; I’ve lived in the Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, and Chicago area in my life. I’ve visited different countries and regions over the years as well. Grass it seems, has many variations, the literal and the not. Seasons don’t fear the reaper.

The one constant denominator that I have found in the places I’ve been, is that if you can get a person to open up enough to you, they will inevitably bitch about where they live and how they can’t wait to go somewhere different. Are we all that unhappy of people, always that bored, always looking for the new promised land? Perhaps this is our way of just finding a way to vent our current frustrations in our own lives. (Think elevator talk about the weather, but on a large community scale).

I am very guilty of such babbling, and sometimes I really make some valid points to my arguments. The babbling usually starts when something else completely irrelevant spurs on this type of thinking. “Dammit I just got a paper cut, if only I lived in New Zealand this wouldn’t have happened”. “I hate wearing shoes all the time, if only I were a fish I wouldn’t have this daily issue”. I could go on. I should go on.

One thing that I’ve watched through it all is when given the option of having a choice, the majority of people usually just stay where they are at. Majority means 51%, so even if you give me your list of a ton of people you know that have moved, my statement still holds valid. I will say that one of the best lessons my parents taught me growing up, is to allow me to fall on my face when I wouldn’t listen to them. Face falling is hilariously tragic, akin to a slow-motion train wreck. So go, go explore our world. Bring out the popcorn, the show will be great. (If you decide to go to space though, give me a call.)

Whether you have a landscape of shitty tall rocks called mountains, shitty tall weeds called palm trees, shitty gravel called desert, shitty crumbling buildings called historic ancient ruins, shitty shiny bodies of water filled with shitty animals, or shitty rolling bumps called grasslands…. you’ve probably thought, “man this place sucks”. But, it very well could be the people too. Maybe they’ve laid down an urban landscape that eats up any serenity that could have been found. I think I’m personally going to join a herd of buffalo or something. Just need a good costume for me and the kids, and keep grazing and keep moving. Perhaps peace is just knowing that there’s unknown wonders out there and you’ll see them eventually. Maybe just look where the buffalo roam.