We’ve heard it time and time again: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But is it, really?
We think it’s probably greener because we only see our grass and think the other grass must be better.
It might, in fact, be greener because the neighbors spend the time and water necessary to fertilize and water it.
The lawn on the other side of the fence might be greener, but it may be mostly crabgrass and other weeds, not so much grass at all.
I’ve been thinking about how grass looks in drone photography. My Irish friend Donal sent me a link to an aerial video of the village near where he lives. In January it was verdant and lush, rippling green fields and the moody Irish Sea. I asked, “How is it so green this time of year?” I mean, we live in a far more temperate area, and that time of year, the lawns are sad and brown, normally lush grass lying dormant in the winter’s chill. Donal replied, “It’s always green!” Some of it is rye, which occasionally people will overseed here in the winter, just to have that green-presenting lawn. (It’s not very soft, though; it looks much nicer than it feels.)
A casual friend named Ben, with whom Hannah and I worked as living history interpreters, does drone photography. Guy’s got an eye, that’s for sure! He has stunning photos of the sun waking up out of the river that runs behind the palace where we worked. Imagine this fiery backdrop of yellows, oranges, pinks, and golds, the light casting the palace in areas of light and dark. The grass must be greener, right? Yet, in those images, you can’t really make that out.
In yet other images, the photos are of the palace with sunlight bathing it. The gardens and lawns are stunning in all their glory–vibrant green grass; a veritable rainbow of flowers in the gardens; and verdant lush fruits, vegetables, and herbs in the kitchen garden. From this lofty height, though, unless you have an expert eye and really zoom in, you’re seeing the beauty without the reality.
These aerial photos can’t differentiate between bermuda and crabgrass. They show beautiful external trappings without ever disclosing what’s going on closer to the ground. They don’t show the brown recluse spiders that occasionally like to hide in the reproduction eighteenth-century military camp. They keep hidden the particles of dust that sneak into the house and hide from its ever-vigilant cleaners. They can’t show the real struggles of the employees and volunteers who make visiting this place enjoyable for guests.
While the grass may be greener, its greenness is often deceptive. It hides its true nature–it fools you into thinking it’s green grass when it’s really just weeds. Or the appearance of the green grass might mask pain and struggles that we’re not seeing. Every now and then, the grass really is greener, because the people diligently tend to it–watering, cutting, and fertilizing it.
Life is like that, too. “Things would only be better if…” Fill in the blank. If I had that new job. If I made more money. If I lived somewhere else. Then maybe we get those things, and life really isn’t better at all. Our older child announced her decision to move to the far side of the country a couple of years ago. I’m talking, about as far from home as she could get and still be in the lower 48. Her dad cautioned her: “You can run away, thinking you’re getting away from your problems, but they have a way of going with you.”
Change could make things better; who hasn’t left a toxic work environment to improve their mental health and go after better opportunities? On the other hand, so often, what needs to change is us. We have to irrigate and fertilize our own lives. We have to add things of value that will help us grow as people, either individuals or people in relationships. We have to get in there with herbicide and insecticide, killing those things that don’t add value to our lives. But we have to do so carefully: what might look like a week is actually a flower that adds benefit to the ecosystem (looking at you clover).
The grass is only greener from a distance or from the most narrow of views.
