Funnily enough, this little nugget has been rearing its head a lot lately. The irony is that the pastures we’re trying to escape are probably the same pastures we ran to with open arms in the not too distant past.
I see this in my own life and recently I’ve been noticing it in others too. Is it part of the human condition to never be satisfied?
In my own life it’s disguised as the need to keep moving. The constant whisper in my head that something needs to change. The change is never clear and eventually frustration drives me out of my mind and I go all in, balls to the wall and just change it all. That way I’m likely to find the offending culprit because nothing stayed the same.
That’s the call now. Pack. Move. Go. GET OUT OF HERE. Yet only 5 short years ago I was on the piece of land I’m now longing to return to. I was living in England and packing up my life to move here because I was just sick of it all. I needed a change. So I changed.
I envisioned a life here, the friends I would have and the things I would do. I would live.
Turns out the plan got lost in the move. I left my friends behind and moved to a place where I became the square peg in the round hole. Stubbornness has stopped me from rounding my edges to fit in. Why should I?
My aunt told me once that I need to maybe be less honest when dealing with other people. Not in the sense that I should lie to them but tone down my life experiences ‘because it intimidates people.’ Tough. Sorry but just because you’ve never crossed a state line in your life doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend I’m like you. I’m not.
I moved my life to this pasture and I didn’t water it. My life was lived in half measures that didn’t make the best use of the energy I expended living. The grass died and it’s a pretty damn barren field right now. Meanwhile the field I left behind is so green it burns my retinas.
Maybe it’s a design flaw in humans. No matter how much we have, we need and want more. I see it in the people around me. We fault and complain about our jobs for whatever reasons; not enough money; don’t like the people we work with; not enough time off; the list is endless. So off they go and look for new jobs with better money, nicer people, a boss they can live with and all the other magic ingredients that make up a greener pasture.
Voila. Found it. New job and off they go. For a few weeks you hear about how amazing it all is and all the new magic stuff they get that they never got before. The people are great, the perks are pure magic and finally they’ve arrived at the greenest pasture ever grown.
Fast forward 3 months, 6 months, maybe a year and it’s back to ‘FML, I hate this place. I hate my job. I need more money. I don’t earn enough. I’m sick of working hard and getting no reward and recognition for it. My boss wants too much and I’m out.’
Where was the tipping point? On what day did the scale fall out of balance back onto the barren pasture side of the equation? Or is it that our lives expanded into the new pasture so completely that it sucked the life out of it? Our lives now need infinitely more to be satisfied and the cycle starts again.
How much is enough? Or do we even have ANY clue as to what would make us happy?
Happiness is a fairly nebulous concept when you think about it. Maybe it has a colour or a sound to it. Maybe it has a shape. Maybe it has none of those things. It floats up in the next pasture like a will-o-the-wisp luring us forward only to disappear the minute we reach it and pop up in the next field; taunting us to a never-ending game of catch.
The grass is greenest where you water it. So what stops us watering it with love and attention? What prevents us from tending the pasture when we arrive? Is it that we’re distracted by the will-o-the-wisp in the next field and gardening duties just fall by the wayside while we try to chase it down? Do we spend any time enjoying the view from the new pasture before setting our sights on the freakishly green one over the next hill?
I haven’t given one iota of care and attention to my life here. I’ve lived, paid my bills and traded my hours for money. Well….. actually that’s not entirely true. I’ve travelled more than I ever have before. I’ve seen my bestie almost every year since I moved here because she’s just a hop over the border in Canada. We’ve gone diving in Mexico which was never on my list of places to go and I loved it! I’ve visited cities it never occurred to me to see and they’ve all been incredible. I’ve made some great lifelong friends. I’ve spent time reconnecting with my family which are bonds I’d never nurtured before. They mean a lot to me now.
Those were the flower beds I planted in my field. Some of those will continue to bloom each year, coming back better and more beautiful than the year before. Others will die off as seasonal plants do. They were beautiful in their time and they will fade from view to be replaced by something new.
Switching pastures is a tedious affair, make no mistake about that. So before you do it again, decide if the new pasture will be worthy of your care and loving attention because that’s what it’s going to take. If you want it to be burn-your-eyes-green, you need to appreciate and care for it. Enjoy the view and stop obsessing about the field over the fence. It’s just another field.
