A few of our friends, love their grass – love making it greener, love mowing it, love the way it looks and spend time comparing their grass photo, their tips and tricks etc… We on the other hand, have grass in our yard, it gets mowed when it needs it and that’s the extent of how much we love our grass. Reading the group chats about grass, makes me smile but I also ponder how some one could love grass so much – it’s just not my jam.
How many of us have wondered about greener grass when it comes to life, where we work, our family, even our selves? I have never really gelled with the phrase, “the grass is always greener on the other side” because I love to question and generally respond to the phrase “Is it really?” I like to see the proof.
Last summer, as we spent time as a family reflecting on the year that finished and the year ahead – we started a family book club – sorry its nerdy but we love it. We started to read Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart. It has turned into a competition to see who can read it the quickest as their is so much gold in this book. It is actually hard not the highlight every word in the book as we are learning so much from it and want to remember all that we have learnt. In one chapter Brown talks about comparison. In this chapter she uses the grass is greener analogy and unpacks it. I never knew this about grass but here it is paraphrased for you (This comes from page 21 of Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown, 2021)
Due to the physics of how grass grows, when we peer over the fence at our neighbors grass it actually does look greener – even if it is truly the same lushness as our own grass. The grass actually looks greener on the other side but that means nothing comparatively its all about perspective.
My encouragement to you, when it comes to asking ourselves if things could be better – yes of course they could be… but are we saying that in light of comparison or perspective? Some times it is hard to tease these two topics apart, but we need to simplify our thinking and ask ourselves the hard questions. Would I be thinking this, if that person didn’t say that to me, if I didn’t see that in their home, if I didn’t see it on the socials. Before we act out of comparison, to change the way we do things/ to change what we have or don’t have because of… stop and check your perspective. Take stock of your own green grass so to speak. Yes we can always improve, we can always be learning and growing, but aim to do it with perspective rather than that of comparison.
Homes of Victory 