Recently, someone told me they envied me.
When I asked why, they commented that since I work for myself, am not married or are a parent, I control how I spend my time and who I work with, that my life is relatively peaceful, and I don’t share anything personal about myself.
True. I rarely have the “Sunday Blues” (that feeling of anxiety, sadness, or depression many feel as the work week approaches), my time is my own for the most part, and I don’t have many of the stressors that many people deal with.
But they deduced this based on what I post on social media of all places.
If you follow me on any of my social media platforms, you’ll notice that I rarely, if ever, share completely personal things about myself these days, and if I do it’s usually tied back into my brand somehow. On my blog, I’ve shared some insights into my life, from the impact of my mother’s death to my IUD insertion experience and my annoyances with the social work profession, among other things. And every so often I’ll post a great concert I went to (like Emily King, Robert Glasper or Anderson Paak), something that inspires me about living in New York City, or my images from my twin’s bridal shower on my social media.
When I’m struggling with something(s), my family, close friends, and my journal will hear about it before I consider posting about it on my blog or on social media. And while it does help to know that we’re not alone in what we’re going through, we also have a right to privacy.
There’s been a lot of talk about how social media is really impacting how we view the world and ourselves. We’re absorbing information like never before, and much of it we resort to conclusions about even if we don’t know the full story.
And even if it’s not something deeply personal, you also don’t have to share it for the world to see.
Now more than ever, it’s important to realize that what we see and how we perceive it may not be the full story. We can come to our own conclusions and still clamor to know more information, but we’re in our rights to disclose what we want.
It’s like standing in your front yard, lamenting over how your grass looks while your neighbor’s grass is vibrantly green. There could be nothing wrong with how your grass looks, but you’re just curious about how your neighbor was able to get their grass that color green.
You can conclude that your neighbor’s been feeding their grass some state-of-the-art or expensive lawn food. But you don’t know what your neighbor had to do to get their grass that color green.
You could ask and a few things could happen: They might not disclose how they did it. They can tell you what they’re using and can recommend you try it (and you can try it and discover it doesn’t work for your lawn). Or you find out that they didn’t do anything differently from what you’ve done; their grass just ended up being that color green.
I call it the “greener grass” syndrome, and it’s impacting our self care.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve ourselves (or our lawns), but sometimes when we get what someone else has in the hopes that our lives will be better, we can discover that it wasn’t all we thought it would be.
Coveting what we think someone else has can lead to feelings of resentment, jealousy, sadness, or the need to “keep up with the Jones”. We can fight the “greener grass” syndrome by acknowledging the situation and what we perceive to be positive about it while doing some self-reflection into why we think that what someone else has is better:
- What does having greener grass mean to me?
- How is having greener grass perceived by my neighbors?
- If my neighbor were to tell me what they did to get their grass greener, do I have the time, money or patience to implement their strategy?
- Does my grass really have to be that color green?
- What do I like about my grass?
- How will I feel if I do what my neighbor did and it doesn’t work?
I have a close friend who recently left an abusive relationship with someone who I thought was the perfect person for her. I have friends who love being business owners, yet sometimes wish they could go back to working for someone else. I know people who’ve had beautiful weddings but tell me how hard marriage is. I also have friends who love their children but suggest to me to wait on motherhood long as I can. We never know what’s going on behind the scenes.
Life isn’t linear, and we don’t have to move at the same speed. Sometimes things aren’t always what they appear to be, and that’s ok. You could go back to wondering about your neighbor and that color green grass of theirs, or you can appreciate your grass’ color more.
Raise Your Voice: Have you experienced “greener grass” syndrome? What did you do to combat it? Share below in the comments section.
