The Other Side

Ever wonder about why people are not content with what they have and whether it is possible at all to be content and therefore happy? My answer is a resounding yes. Resounding because I heard it again as soon as I said yes. Maybe it was my alter ego, maybe God himself or maybe my son playing tricks with me, again.

Well, the research, if you can call it that, gave me the biggest reason for discontentment; ‘The Grass is Greener on the Other Side’. The single most cause of many of man’s miseries has been looking at the other side, whether it was money, men/women or power, someone always had more and/or better and one's own satisfaction was trivialized / overpowered by some other persons achievements and the poor chap does not even know it.

Happy people, where are they;

In the 60’s, during the hippy movement, everyone was happy and high. I was not there but whatever little I have read, they knew Grass to be something entirely different from the grass I am talking about. For them there was no other side. Most of them were on Grass and a slight difference in texture did not make any difference to them. 'Grass is Grass man!,' they would say. Beatles said, Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona, for some California Grass. The song was about the grass being greener on the other side, but more than that the song was about getting back to where you belong and that is where most happiness and contentment is.

I spent some time in the southernmost tip of India. Okay, it was not Kanyakumari, just a few kilometers higher. It’s pretty close to the equator and the soil is also pretty much impotent. If you tell someone there that the Grass is greener on the other side, he/she will respond, “Green grass!” The place is so sterile and hot that the grass gets a yellow texture within a few hours of sprouting. For them the grass is green very temporarily, it is yellow otherwise.

Someone asked Einstein, “What’s on the other side?” He said, “mc square.” Today everyone wishes that he had known what really was on the other side. But the damage was done and the world forever is condemned to live under the shadow of the nuclear threat. Was Einstein happy? Yes, as long as he didn’t know what really was on the other side. Once he did find out, he regretted it and spent the rest of his life as an anti-nuclear activist.

Of all the geometrical shapes, the point is most interesting. No direction, no measurement, no attributes, it’s nothing but just a point. It is in the here and now. It is freedom. From a point one can take off in any direction. At a point there is no other side.

The point I am trying to make is that we should forget rather ignore everything. We should forget that there is another side, we should forget the grass is green, we should even stop looking at grass, it has been long since we stopped eating grass.

Most importantly, Are we even sure that Green grass is what we really want?