Believing the Grass is Greener

I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not on our circumstances.
- Martha Washington

So often we think, “life will get better when [insert circumstantial change here].” But it hit me the other day that the quality of discontent and boredom expressed by myself and my friends is exactly the same regardless of the circumstances that we each hang that contentment and excitement upon. One person feels trapped until they can buy their own house; another feels trapped in the house that they bought. One person feels life is on pause until they get married; another feels frustrated by a marriage they want to get out of. The same person who desperately wants something can later struggle profoundly with the challenges implicit in having that very thing, be it a child, a dog, a move, or a promotion. Here we all are, desiring what we are sure will elevate our happiness, and yet coming to discover that one can struggle just as much despite (or because of) having it.

The truth sinking into me is this: we keep thinking things are better on the other side, but that’s a lie. Things are not better; they’re just different. Getting what we want doesn’t mean trading in something worse for something better, it just means trading in one kind of blessing and problem for another. That is not to say circumstances aren’t important, but they do not guarantee long-term happiness or satisfaction. They don’t inherently fix everything. There is something about our human nature that does not want to believe this. We tacitly buy into the delusion that the grass is greener on the other side, but it simply isn’t.

The more I think about it, the more deeply I think this delusion affects me. It makes me think my real life will start later, when I graduate or lose weight or find the perfect friend. It makes me see the present as something to just be gotten through, until the next nap or vacation. It makes me expend significant amounts of emotional and mental energy fantasizing about how things could look different. It makes me impatient for things I want to come true, and bitter if they don’t. 

In fact, this addiction to circumstantial change runs so deep in me that it’s not something I can easily be talked out of. As Montaigne said, “We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.” Someone on the other side can tell me whatever I want is not going to fix everything, but I historically have not been great at functionally believing it until I discover that truth for myself.

Perhaps some of this is the sin of covetousness. It is alright to express longing, to grieve an unmet desire, to work earnestly towards an external goal, but when my energy is spent fixating on that thing I want, when I come to functionally believe that above anything else it is most likely to make me truly happy, when bitterness brews because I cannot get it when I want to, then I am treading into covetousness. To covet is simply to want what you do not have, particularly if you see others having it. It makes us blind to what we do have, it obscures the deeper discontents of our soul that only God can address, and it is a sin because it directly opposes God’s sovereignty and a trustful obedience in his provision and the timing of his work in our lives.

I recall reading in a commentary on Romans 7 once that covetousness is a sin which sums up all the others, which is why it is the only aspect of the law Paul mentions in that chapter. It is there at the beginning, when humankind stood in the middle of a garden filled with all the fruits in creation and could only see the fruit on the one forbidden tree. It is there at the end, the last of the ten commands, the final word. Today I read the sad story of Ai in Joshua 7, in which an investigation leads to the uncovering of one simple transgression which spawned dozens of deaths: “I coveted them and I took them” (Joshua 7:21). 

The truth is, the present is not “something to get through” until I get to whatever change I think will make me better or happier. The substance of my life, the action of God in speaking to and through me and working for my eternal good, is not happening in some future I’m hoping for, but exactly where I am now. The question to ask is not, “when will I get there?” but “what are you offering me now, Lord?”