Why is the grass always greener on the other side? Why do we always regret the choices we didn't ma

Some deep questions I have about life.

Why is the grass always greener on the other side? Why does every choice seem to lead to suffering? It's like when you make a choice, you find yourself wishing that you had made the other choice!

For example, if you are single, you will long for the love, companionship and stability of marriage and committed relationships. You will often feel lonely, like no one really cares about you or is there for you.

But if you are married, then you long for the freedom of being single and feel like a caged bird with obligations and responsibilities, unfree to meet other exciting women and develop new connections, or pursue your passions.

If you are a perpetual traveler wandering around the world, after a while you may long for the stability of a home, family, routine, stable friends, etc. But if you have a normal stable routine life, then you may long for adventure, new experiences, freedom, seeing new lands, etc.

If you have a blonde girlfriend, after a while, you lust for brunettes, and vice versa. If you have an Asian wife, you may begin fantasizing about having a white wife after a while, and vice versa if you have a white wife.

Or, take these simpler examples:

If you stay home too long, you will feel bored, like you need to get out and have some fresh air and move around. But if you are out for a while (esp if you are an introvert), you will feel tired and miss the comfort of a cozy home. Isn't that weird?

If you stop eating junk food, you will crave it after a while and miss the flavor. But if you stuff yourself with junk food, then you will feel guilty and wish you hadn't. At that point, you will realize that staying healthy and not eating it would have been better. But if you hadn't eaten it, then you would have felt the craving for it! So either way, you lose and suffer!

It seems that whatever choice you make leads to suffering. Why is that? Is the universe playing some cruel trick on us? Are we meant to suffer and crave and feel dissatisfied?

Why is the grass always greener on the other side? Why does the grass on the other side always appear to be more desirable? Why do we always regret the choice we didn't make?

Is this what Buddha meant when he said that "the nature of life is suffering?"

reply to post by WWu777


Dear WWu777,

Consider what you said. If you like brunettes you will want to be with blondes and such. The question is not why is the grass greener on the other side, it isn't greener, that is the meaning of the old saying. If you have a purpose in your life then the grass won't matter that much. If you make your life about obtaining momentary pleasure then that is all you will get. If we focus on the trivial and superficial then that is all our lives will be. It just works that way.

reply to post by AQuestion


absolutely, point being made..

STOP WANTING STUFF

Originally posted by WWu777
Why is the grass always greener on the other side? Why does every choice seem to lead to suffering? It's like when you make a choice, you find yourself wishing that you had made the other choice!

I just don't bother worrying about it. What's done is done, you can't change the past so there is no sense dwelling on something that's irrelevant. Instead, every moment of your life try to make the right decisions now so that you won't have to think back and regret them. Sometimes it's not an easy thing to do, but its worth the shot. It doesn't matter what you did a second ago as long as you do whats right now, if you were doing that a second ago you would have another second not to think about it. It's a personal paradox of sorts, the more you regret bad decisions the more time you waste making the right ones.

reply to post by WWu777


I'm really glad with all the choices I've made in life, even though I've made big mistakes I don't regret them at all. If It wasn't for the past I chose, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

I think younger people regret things more.. I am 27, and often I think more about things like the 'one that got away' or not staying at a certain job..

but my grandma.. she just thinks about the good times in her life (mostly).. she remembers being with my grandpa, and the things they did. So I don't think she is at a point she regrets anything she did, just that she is sad to have lost so many loved ones.

Originally posted by ReadyPower
I think younger people regret things more.. I am 27, and often I think more about things like the 'one that got away' or not staying at a certain job..

but my grandma.. she just thinks about the good times in her life (mostly).. she remembers being with my grandpa, and the things they did. So I don't think she is at a point she regrets anything she did, just that she is sad to have lost so many loved ones.

Yea, with so many nostalgic memories of things past it makes you wonder if it would really be such a great thing to be able to live forever (or for a long time) like some talk about.

Cool avatar picture btw.

Originally posted by WWu777
Why is the grass always greener on the other side? Why does every choice seem to lead to suffering? It's like when you make a choice, you find yourself wishing that you had made the other choice!

You have a lot to say there so I'm going to focus on this.

I have a few things I've done that I often think back and know for a fact that my life would be completely different had I made a different choice. I really don't want to get into specifics but if I had gone one way about eight years ago I think I would be sitting pretty right now. However I did what I did and as a result of going down that path my life kind of sucks right now.

Here's why it gets funny and why I wouldn't change a thing. Had I not made those decisions, bad as they were for me, families and children would not be here. These people are happy, making lives for themselves and don't even think about me anymore, I guess. Point is, had I not done some of the things I did other people's lives would have taken a different path and from what I see they're happy. What am I getting at? Sure I'm unhappy but if I had made the right choice back in the day these people might have never met. I'm not selfish enough to wish their happiness and children away for my comfort.

It's hard to lay it out without getting too particular so I'm getting frustrated, I hope you understand what I getting at.

There is that old "blues" song by the long-gone singer Peggy Lee, Is That All There Is...? It says it all.

But if you want a more technical understanding, I suggest we do something a bit strange and consider the First Law of the science of Economics as usually taught the first day in a college course of Economics 101.

The First Law of Economics states: "Human greed is insatiable."
Understand that, and you fairly well understand the driving force of humanity that predates and overrides consciousness.

Stop asking yourself what you want and start realizing what you need.............................

I'm not sure if you're an American, but if you are (as am I) then you've been taught that you can have it all, and that success in life is defined by your having won everything that you want out of life. While this may be a positive enough view of what it means to be alive and human on Planet Earth, it does introduce the inherent responsibility (and pressure) that what you choose to have be what you ultimately want out of life. Right down to the pathetically mundane (a blonde woman or a brunette woman).

If you wander through a supermarket, the overwhelming amount of mundane choices becomes obvious. Cheerios or Honey Nut Cheerios? Canned pear halves or canned pear slices? Milk or....milk - each choice likely identical except for the name on the package?

This "existential angst" is pretty new for the human being, and really only felt as a widespread "problem" by members of the American society. If you travel to Europe (another highly developed modern society, overall) you'd be distressed at how drastically your mundane choices are limited.

"Yikes, only 5 TV channel choices! How will I exist?"

The free market system in this nation has been great for expanding choices for us, but nothing comes without a price. You're dealing with the price of unfettered freedom to choose from an extremely broad selection. I'm on my 3rd marriage, so I can sympathize with you. Hell, if I had any answers for how you settle in and stop seeing the options forever, I'd have lived a much different life to this point.

One poster (above) did offer a good distraction, though. Find something that you need to give to (and idea, a cause, a goal) and those distracting options will slowly fade away. Nothing else will satisfy you if you don't. Well, until you age to the point when all those options begin to refuse your selection, and you're finally grateful for the acceptance from any option at all. But, that's something that everyone eventually deals with.

reply to post by WWu777

You know the answer, we are looking for happiness and an escape from misery, only to find there isn't perfection in this life, once you are as exhausted as I am you stop looking for a quick fix, and just are grateful for every day that passes with no drama.

Just happy for the little things, food on the table, and a roof over my head, but I know in the twinkling of an eye I might not have that.

Living on the edge.

reply to post by Aliensun

Is That All There Is...? It says it all.

aint that the truth,

reply to post by WWu777


the five senses. hear, eat, feel, smell, see. the endless desire of need. 5 points. the pentagram. an icon of our struggle with internal evil. all that is good and holy and all that is evil resides inside you. the kingdom of god resides within you. the "struggle" in life is to tame the 5 senses to do the will of the spirit that dwells within you - your true light.

Human beings are vessels - boats - with which light travels through time and space. Your carbon based body is just the host for this miracle, but the struggle is inherent with the bodies we've been given. That is the "sin" that we've all been born into - we live in a world where these 5 senses control the world & they can't truly be satiated. This is the suffering and what religions call to "die to self" daily.

live powerfully friends.

reply to post by WWu777


In any serious thinking about life -or about anything, really- stereotypes must be discarded first.
The "grass is always greener on the other side" is not a truth - it's simply an old saying that does not reflect the life experience of everyone. So, chuck it out (along with terms like "everyone" and "always"); it has no real use.

If you want my opinion, the people who always seem to want something else then what they have or are are the same people who have never given serious thought to their own lives and in general lack self-reflection.
But not everyone is like that, and the experience of those who aren't has to be taken into account.

(FWIW, I have never ever wanted a different life, a different "me". I like what I am/have, and I am very appreciative of it because I realize not everyone is half as lucky. I could say the same about most of my friends and family.. Those few among them who tend to compare themselves with others - which is the first grave error - are, predictably, the least inclined to self-reflection.)

Are those examples you have shown coming from your own conscious decision? Or are those examples coming from your body/mind/feelings that society has helped you build upon? Just stripped your self of all those things(not literally) Then you are free from all that regret and suffering you happen to believe life is full of.

Also, why does Murphy's Law seem to control the universe? It seems like the universe is always against you, giving you the opposite of what you want.

For example:

- What you want the most is always the hardest to get, and what you want the least is the easiest to get.

- By the time someone becomes financially independent, they will have lost their youth, be over the hill and less attractive, so that they can't enjoy their freedom as much as if they were young.

- By the time you finally get what you want, it's already too late. Or you don't get what you want until it's too late.

- Great jobs that involve travel usually go to men with families, rather than to men who are free and single.

- Desirable women don't want you unless you are already taken or attached. You are more likely to meet your soulmate when you are already married than when you are single.

- Opportunities to meet girls you like don't come unless you are already taken. When you are single and alone, they don't come.

- You always find something the last place you look. If you look for something and it can be in five possible places, you always find it in the 5th place rather than the first through fourth.

- When I am at an intersection and don't know which way to turn, and take a random guess, 90 percent of the time I make the wrong turn. How can a 50/50 chance go wrong 90 percent of the time?!

- Why do interruptions come at the worst times?

- Why do important calls come when you are not available to answer the phone or when you step out for a minute?

- Why does traffic increase when you are late? Why do other cars in front of you move slower when you are late?

Have any of you noticed this? Why is the universe always against us? Why does Murphy's Law rule the universe rather than some fair and just God? Is the universe some kind of a trickster?

Originally posted by AdAstra
reply to post by WWu777

 

In any serious thinking about life -or about anything, really- stereotypes must be discarded first.
The "grass is always greener on the other side" is not a truth - it's simply an old saying that does not reflect the life experience of everyone. So, chuck it out (along with terms like "everyone" and "always"); it has no real use.

If you want my opinion, the people who always seem to want something else then what they have or are are the same people who have never given serious thought to their own lives and in general lack self-reflection.
But not everyone is like that, and the experience of those who aren't has to be taken into account.

(FWIW, I have never ever wanted a different life, a different "me". I like what I am/have, and I am very appreciative of it because I realize not everyone is half as lucky. I could say the same about most of my friends and family.. Those few among them who tend to compare themselves with others - which is the first grave error - are, predictably, the least inclined to self-reflection.)

edit on 28-7-2012 by AdAstra because: (no reason given)

It is not a stereotype. It reflects the nature of human psychology. What do you mean it has no use? It describes our nature in a simple easy to understand why. That's why I used it. It sums up what I am talking about and experiencing. I guess you aren't like me so you don't relate to me. Oh well.