The Grass is Always Browner

Things haven't been awesome for me for... a long while. Stuff I thought was long in my past has reared its ugly head and I get to deal with the same stuff all over again. Stuff I'd like to pretend never happened.

Mix that with my genuine hatred for the fact that it gets so dark so fast and the fact that this semester has been a train wreck (and I fully believe that unless something changes quickly, next semester will ruin my will to graduate) things have been getting pretty heavy for me.

Talk about when it rains it pours.

And on top of everything else a very dear friend, whom I love, has been deeply hurt in a completely horrific way.

I spent the last few weeks pretty angry, until last Sunday.

The speakers in church spoke about gratitude, being the Sunday after Thanksgiving and all, and this one guy got up and said something  that just hit me: "Yes the grass may be greener on the other side, things may be easier for them over there, but if you turn around and look the other way you'll see that the grass is much browner over there. No matter what, someone always has it worse than you."

I gave that some thought for awhile and felt pretty guilty, I'm much luckier than most. And I had to remind myself that life is hard for everyone, there isn't anyone getting by with a perfect road.

Wallowing in our own misery just keeps us stuck. It doesn't get us anywhere. Constantly thinking about what isn't perfect in our lives doesn't work toward making it better, it just blows the bad up and makes it look bigger than it is in reality.

Do you ever have things you just want to stop thinking about, but you can't? Things you just want to erase and pretend like they never happened? Have you ever wished that you could transport yourself into the future, into that part of time that has healed the wounds? Me too.

Problem is that we can't. We can't just pass by the hard stuff, because the hard stuff is what makes us work and work teaches us who we are and what we are capable of. So the closest thing to a solution is:

Stop thinking so much, and just start doing all the things that you know are good for you.