15 Sept 2011

When the grass is greener on the other side...

Greetings my dear friends, visitors and residents of The Light Planet! I hope you are all well in every possible level.


Recently on a trip to Paris, in the middle of a friends reunion, everyone was asking me how things are going here in Los Angeles, and how life is in general. They all seemed fascinated with the idea of the American Dream and the life in this side of the world. During a brief moment of silence most of them stood looking up as if to some invisible point on the horizon, yearning to be in L.A. and one of them broke the silence with a toast to Los Angeles, to which we all joined.

As this unfolded in front of my eyes, I sensed a bit of irony seeing how all this Parisians who, live and experience on a daily basis one of the most beautiful cities in the world, were yearning to be in Los Angeles. I instantly remembered having experienced the exact same reaction when I told my friends in Los Angeles that I was traveling to Paris; they were all yearning to be in Paris.

Right after this, I suddenly felt conscious of the phrase: “The grass is always greener on the other side”.

I found myself witnessing a perfect example of such phrase.
Those who are here yearn to be there, those who are there yearn to be here. And so we are constantly yearning to be "on the other side", having all that which we don’t have and so we forget to touch base with all that which we do have but start taking for granted.

When we are not able to appreciate what we have, we slowly stop seeing all that which is good in our life, we lose perspective and get into the game of looking for validation elsewhere, to be told that “everything is OK” and we feel the need to feed off of external elements that can help us feel that we are indeed “well positioned” in life.

We fail to remember that everything is well in the universe, in its own balance even when we might find it hard to understand and that if we really need to touch base with the essence of the life we’ve created; a simple inventory of the big and small things we can easily identify becomes the fastest reconnection and the only compass we need to put us back in track.

Let’s maintain and walk barefoot over our own grass, let’s appreciate and enjoy it for it’s the only one we have, let’s turn it into the garden of our dreams and then there wont be any garden "on the other side" that we fancy more than our own.