Growing up, I remember hearing the expression, “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
I understood what the words meant. I just didn’t understand the wisdom behind them.
Like so many lessons in life, sometimes you have to live long enough to finally understand what people were trying to tell you.
For much of my life, I compared myself to other people without necessarily realizing I was doing it. Someone had a better career. Someone made more money. Someone had a happier marriage. Someone seemed more successful. Someone was more talented, more confident, more respected, or simply appeared to have figured out something about life that I hadn’t.
And today, we have managed to make comparison available twenty-four hours a day.
All we have to do is pick up our phones.
We Are Comparing Our Lives to Someone Else’s Highlights
Social media has given us an extraordinary window into the lives of other people. The problem is that the window doesn’t always show us reality.
We see vacations, anniversaries, new homes, promotions, beautiful families, successful businesses, new cars, perfect dinners and smiling faces.
We rarely see the argument that happened before the photograph.
We don’t see the debt behind the new purchase.
We don’t see the loneliness inside the beautiful house.
We don’t see the anxiety, disappointment, struggling marriage, sleepless night, family problems, fear or spiritual emptiness.
And I’m not suggesting everyone on social media is pretending to be happy. Many of those moments are probably very real.
But they are still moments.
Yet somehow, we can take someone else’s moment and compare it to the entirety of our own life.
That is an incredibly unfair comparison.
And I have done it.
The Grass Really Does Look Greener
When I was younger, “the grass is always greener” sounded like another one of those expressions adults repeated because adults repeated them.
Now I understand it.
The grass looks greener because we’re looking at it from a distance.
We don’t know what it costs to maintain.
We don’t know what is happening beneath it.
And sometimes we’re so busy staring over the fence that we stop tending to the ground God has given us.
That last part has become increasingly important to me.
Because comparison doesn’t merely make me desire someone else’s life. It can prevent me from recognizing the blessings within my own.
There is another familiar saying: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
I would add another word.
Comparison is the thief of contentment.
And contentment is something I didn’t truly appreciate until much later in life.
Scripture Was Warning Us All Along
St. Paul understood something about contentment that took me nearly fifty years to begin understanding myself.
He wrote:
“I have learned, in whatever situation I find myself, to be self-sufficient. I know indeed how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance.”
— Philippians 4:11–12
Paul’s contentment wasn’t dependent upon everything going his way. In fact, his circumstances were often extraordinarily difficult.
His contentment came from somewhere deeper.
A few verses later comes one of the most frequently quoted passages in Scripture:
“I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.”
— Philippians 4:13
Read in context, that verse means even more to me.
Paul isn’t simply talking about accomplishing great things.
He’s talking about remaining grounded in Christ whether he has much or little.
That’s a very different definition of success than the world often gives us.
Scripture also gives us this simple warning:
“Let us not be conceited, provoking one another, envious of one another.”
— Galatians 5:26
Envy requires comparison.
I first have to look at what someone else possesses before I can decide that what God has given me isn’t enough.
And that is where comparison can become spiritually dangerous.
Someone Will Always Have More
This is something I wish I had understood much earlier.
There will always be someone with more.
More money.
More recognition.
More talent.
More friends.
More possessions.
More opportunities.
More apparent happiness.
If my contentment depends upon eventually reaching a point where nobody has more than I do, then contentment will never arrive.
There will always be another fence with greener grass.
That’s the trap.
For years, I thought happiness was something I could eventually acquire if I worked hard enough, accomplished enough, or somehow arranged the circumstances of my life correctly.
Age has a way of exposing the weakness in that idea.
So does faith.
Jesus Changed What “Enough” Means to Me
My understanding of contentment began changing as my relationship with Jesus became more important in my life.
I still have responsibilities.
I still have things I want.
I still have disappointments.
There are certainly things about my life I would change if given the opportunity.
Faith hasn’t somehow made me immune to being human.
But something fundamental has changed.
I no longer believe that the missing piece of my life is necessarily somewhere on the other side of the fence.
The older I become, the more I recognize what an extraordinary gift it is simply to know Christ, to receive Him in the Eucharist, to seek His forgiveness in Confession, to speak with Him in prayer, and to know that this temporary life isn’t the entirety of my existence.
That changes the calculation.
The world constantly tells us to look horizontally:
Look at him.
Look at her.
Look at what they have.
Look at where they went.
Look at what you don’t have.
Christ continually invites us to look upward.
And when I do that, strangely enough, I find myself looking around less.
Contentment Doesn’t Mean Giving Up
I used to misunderstand contentment somewhat.
It sounded dangerously close to settling.
Shouldn’t I want to improve my circumstances? Shouldn’t I work harder? Shouldn’t I have goals?
Of course.
Contentment isn’t laziness.
It isn’t abandoning ambition or refusing to improve ourselves.
It is refusing to make our peace dependent upon obtaining the life someone else appears to have.
There is an enormous difference.
I can work toward something while still thanking God for where I am today.
I can desire change without despising my present circumstances.
I can admire another person’s blessings without believing their blessings diminish mine.
And I can acknowledge what is missing from my life without allowing those absences to define it.
I’m still learning this.
Nearly Fifty Years Later
Sometimes I wonder how differently I might have viewed certain periods of my life if I had understood this when I was younger.
But perhaps some lessons require age.
Maybe hearing “the grass is always greener” wasn’t enough.
I had to spend some time staring over fences.
I had to chase things.
I had to compare.
I had to discover that achievements don’t permanently satisfy us, possessions eventually become ordinary, attention fades, circumstances change, and someone will always appear to have something we don’t.
Eventually, I began to understand something much simpler.
I don’t need someone else’s life in order to be grateful for mine.
God didn’t ask me to live their life.
He gave me this one.
With its blessings.
Its mistakes.
Its disappointments.
Its crosses.
Its opportunities.
Its people.
Its unfinished business.
And, most importantly, another day in which I can choose Him.
Maybe that’s the part of contentment I was missing all along.
I spent years looking around to determine whether I had enough.
Now I’m learning to look toward Christ and ask a completely different question:
If I have Him at the center of my life, what exactly am I comparing?
The grass may still look greener on the other side of the fence.
I’m just not as interested in staring at it anymore.
