the grass is always greener

Summary

Choice can often be a curse, especially when it comes to life games. We always want more and we are always looking at what we have and thinking it’s not enough. So what happens when we get to play the game of choice?

The Grass is Always Greener

It’s human nature to always want more than we have. We’re just never satisfied. The mere suggestion that there may be a better option than the one we have is enough to make us risk the good thing we’ve got now. And sometimes by choosing to go to the next field where we think the grass is greener we end up with less, because in reality its not. Or is it?

The problem is choice

This game is for one player only. The choice is ours and ours alone, and that’s probably why we can never just be happy with what we have. Imagine you are given two envelopes of money and you are told that one contains twice what the other contains, but you don’t know which is which. You can only pick one. If you choose an envelope and find £1000 in there, that’s great, right? But the other could contain £2000, or of course it could contain £500. The fact that the envelope still unopened could have double what we now hold in our hand is enough to drive us crazy! It means we could have missed out on doubling our money, and even though we might not have, this means we are not satisfied with what we have.

It’s not just about the money

We are playing this game in our everyday lives without realising it. In today’s society nobody is ever satisfied with what they have. Next door has a bigger car and better vacations than us. If we could swap lives with our neighbour, would we? The truth is, we don’t know for sure that next door has a better life than us, it might just seem that way. They could be in debt, it could all just be for show. But the possibility of more being dangled in front of us means we are never happy with what we have. Now, consider that neighbour and what they are thinking. Do they believe they are happier than you and have more than you? What if they are thinking the exact same thing as you are and they want what you have?

When two people play

Let’s flip this upside down and set two people against each other. If this game is played with two confident, perhaps even arrogant, people it gets very interesting, because these two people will both believe they have the best hand. What if these two players were told that whoever has the best life gets to keep what they have and everything the other player has too? You guessed it, they both believe they have the best life. In the rules of this game, if neither of them thinks they have less they are tied and can both just go back to their happy lives. 9times out of 10 this is exactly what will happen, but you can bet your life they are both now looking at what the other guy has with an envious slant!