Always Greener

A few days ago, I finally caught one of my best friends online. It has been years since we've really talked and chatting with her kinda brought me back to when things were so much simpler...when all we worried about was passing the geom finals or physics exam (well, at least I worried hehehe, she never had that problem ;-p )...when problems were limited to not having enough allowance for a movie and popcorn...and when everything could be solved by a bag of Taco Bell or Nacho Cheese Doritos and a bottle of Tequila...

It hit me (or if I may say so, us) that life right now has not just gotten more complicated, but it seems that it has lost it's sense of completion. What I mean here is not that life has lost its purpose, but it seems to have lost a tangible goal in sight. A goal that would actually mean a "finish" to something. Unlike when we we're younger, we had a finish line in sight, be it graduation, finishing college, earning a masters degree, getting a job, or marriage. Now, it's like no matter how hard you work and how much money you make, there's no end in sight. Like she asked, then what? Have kids, they get older, move out, then we're back to where we started...asking "now what???".

A conclusion we arrived at is that, no matter how cliche it sounds, the grass is alway greener in the other pasture. It's not that we don't appreciate the grass around us, it just seems that when you look up, something looks better somewhere else. Take for example the two of us. She's in the States making a great future for herself....earning well, settling down with a husband, buying her first home...but she still admits she hasn't found out what it is she really wants. Likewise, here I am making a great future for myself...sure no husband, no great future or new home, but a career I am proud of and dedicated to, but admittedly still searching for that thing to make it all complete.

That night, I had a strange dream. I dreamt I entered a mall and went window shopping. I saw so many things I wanted and sure I purchased a few items but there was still so much I wanted that I didn't have enough for. When closing time came, I got ready to walk to my car. Thing is, I couldn't find my way to the parking lot where my car is. It seemed that every where I looked, there was a better exit to take. One that was the safest, the nearest, etc. But everytime I took that exit, it was wrong. It was like the exit was always across from where I was.

It's been a few days since then and it hasn't really left me. It just hit me that maybe my dream had some connection to our conversation. I think that we, as humans, kinda get sidetracked by so much that seems better up ahead that we don't sit back and enjoy the present. We work so hard to make more money, to be the best, to reach the finish line...then when we get there we realize, now what?

What I learned from this is that yes, the grass may seem always be greener somewhere else. As it should be. If everything was the same, then what purpose would we have in life then? We'd just be living for subsistence, wouldn't we? But this time instead of getting consumed with the question of how to get to the place where the grass is greener, we should think about how we can make our grass greener too. Maybe it never will be as green as other pastures, but then again, maybe that's only from our jaded lenses.