I think the reason why the phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side” exists, falls back to the fact we are a species who will never be satisfied. I think about it a lot, the way things are never how we planned, how things are never how we remember. How we are always progressing, trying to move forward and be better. Every part of us evolves to try and be the best. Maybe the greener grass is the future; we will always arrive in the future but when we do, it will have changed to the present, it will have become the yellow frayed grass we wanted to avoid. Maybe the other side is the future we can never arrive in.
One of my best friends learned about this term in psych class and gave me a lamest terms summary about it. She said it was something where people look back on who they were in the past and hate themselves but for some reason think their present self is so much better. I explained it very poorly and it seems like it doesn’t make sense, I know, but let me explain. It’s like when you look back on pictures of yourself from years ago. For example, when I look at pictures of me circa middle school I quite literally dry heave. I had THE WORST sense of style and my hairstyle was almost the ugliest thing I had ever seen, second to my teeth. But the weirdest part about it all is that I thought I was cool back then. I thought I had the best clothes and wore my hair in a cute barrette. I really thought I was awesome, but looking back on it I physically cannot understand how I had friends.
Since I’m a textbook over-thinker I pushed further into this idea. How is it that you think so different of yourself just because you’re older? I suppose I composed a theory that this idea roots itself into the fact we are never happy with ourselves. I know this sounds super depressing and I suppose it kind of is, but I guess being depressing is my favorite way to write.
Maybe it’s because we know we’re different? Maybe we only dislike our past selves because we know who they were, the choices they made, the things they did. What if we associate those things with those pictures so it’s who we were that is making us upset, not what we look like, but we blame our looks because physical evidence is the only thing that is left of our past.
I want to @ myself and say it’s not that deep, because it’s not. Pictures are pictures and sometimes we really do hate our old selves because we’re ugly; I just like being over dramatic I suppose. I guess I just think about what will happen in a few years. Will I hate who I am now? Will I look at pictures of myself now and talk about how little I knew and how much I wish I could change? Will we ever be happy with the combination of who we were, who we are and who we will be?
Maybe I’m thinking too much. Maybe we just have to live and see if we find the green grass.
