I find this is often a conflict between what i want and what other people tell me I should want. And by “other people”, that is usually advertising companies.

There are billions of dollars being spent to convince me to go to bars and buy alcohol. Billions being spent to convince me to go out to eat at restaurants or order something delivered through an app. Billions being spent to tell me my body isn’t good enough, so I shoukd get hair treatment kr skin products or exercise equipment. Billions being spent to try to convince me to buy a bunch of cheap plastic shit, and a bigger house or even a separate storage unit to put it all in. Billions being spent to convince me to go to concerts and stand-up shows and raves and movies and festivals and conventions where I can spend more money. Billions being spent trying tk get me to sign up for a monthly subscription for everything. There’s billions being spent by various religions to try to convince me to join. For women, there’s actually money being spent by misogynists to convince them to promote the “tradwife” lifestyle.

A lot of the best things in life don’t have marketing budgets. There’s no one advertising the relief you feel when you have a solid emergency fund, gow great it feels when an appliance breaks and you can just replace it withoit having to stress over it. There’s no one advertising how good it is just to go for a walk, or to spend a summer evening sitting on my back porch, watching the bats catching fireflies in the woods. There’s no one advertising how good it feels to re-read your favorite book fkr the 20th time, or to watch your favorite TV show on DVD for the 10th time. There’s no one advertising having a couplr of close friends over for an evening to just… Talk. There’s no one advertising the evenings where my wife and I just put on one of our favorite albums and lay in bed listening to it. There was advertising involved to get us to BUY that album, and even that bed, but no advertising to get us to actually ENJOY those things. You need to do it yourself.

It is also not a binary system. Plenty of people go out to raves or burns once or twice a year, going on benders, then go back to quiet and simple lifestyles the rest of the time.

You spend years of your youth getting to the other side and see how shit the grass is there. Then you realize that you need to plant something other than grass. You then spend decades removing grass and planting native plants that thrive with less effort and are even more beautiful.

Thank you for coming to my combination life lesson and anti grass yard TED talk.

I’m going to start this with allegory and bring it back around to practical application.

My neighbor IRL legitimately has greener grass than I do. She also has 4 dogs who poop and fertilize the lawn everyday. She can’t walk into her yard without shoes on or without watching where she steps. She has a toddler who isn’t allowed to play in her backyard because of the dog poop. I may see her greener grass and want greener grass, it’s fine to want greener grass. But once I stop and look at why she has greener grass and what not only her, but her family has to sacrifice to get that greener grass, I realize it’s not worth it to me. I like being able to grill outside, I like being able to walk barefoot, I like not worrying about what’s in my lawn. Would I like it to be greener? Sure, but not at the cost of losing the very thing that I want.

The way things are perceived doesn’t reveal what it actually took to get those results. Especially in the social media age where everything is a cherry picked version of reality. You are never getting the full story in today’s social media environment, and with the prevalence of filters and AI what tiny story you are getting might straight up be a lie.

The best advice I can give is to look at the greener field, and actually talk to people who have a greener field. Don’t just follow them on social media or watch videos about it, talk to them. It’s much harder to lie face to face than it is on a video. If you can, try it for a week, then ask yourself, would I still want to do this when life happens and things aren’t perfect. Would I want to do this for the next 5, 10, 20 years? Once you have an idea of what sacrifices it will take to get the greener field, then and only then can you ask yourself is it worth it? It may be, in which case, attack it with gusto. It may not, in which case, fantasizing is fun, but that’s all it is, a fantasy.

Good luck.

Since you’ve tried both, you can ground yourself in realistic expectations when thinking about either lifestyle.

When someone fantasizes about something, usually they are only thinking about the nice parts of that experience. And conversely, once a person is used to their current life, the novelty wears off and people tend to take some things for granted, not realizing they’re enjoying it until they don’t have it anymore.

So my suggestion is: Think about both the positives and negatives of the road you aren’t taking right now, then count the blessings of your current situation, then think about where you want to take yourself from there. Don’t give up on figuring out what you want, but if you’re getting what you think you want but still constantly yearning for something else, you should step back and evaluate things with just a bit more of a calm and rational mind.

When you do that enough times you learn about how much your fantasies inflates your expectations and can adjust to roughly the right amount of green.

Or you can invert it, think of all the things you’d miss if you lose what you have now.

Well… to be fair… nobody can sustain the wild life forever… the rolling stones are sober, Charlie Sheen is sober, etc. Everyone chills out or burns out… The healthiest way to deal with this is to find a balance. Think of what you enjoy and what you dislike about both sides and try and find a middle ground.

For some of my friends, that meant gathering 2-3 times a year and throwing a small rave where they can indulge in the wild life before going back to their normal one. For another, it was about finding a partner that was into swinging. For others it was simply enough to have enough to have a couple of good, supportive friends who kept them grounded.

There is no line dividing the two states. They are parts of a spectrum. We all have a need for novelty and predictability in different ratios. Find the point where your need for novelty is met, keeping you from boredom, and where your need for predictability is met, preventing burnout.

It is important to recognize that variety is the spice of life and that you may not want the same thing over and over again. I’ve generally shifted my hobbies around as needed to prove my life with things I’m not getting from my day to day activities.

I think a lot of people learn to be satisfied with age and experience, and you’re getting closer to that every day. You’ve now experienced that the grass isn’t fully green on either side of the stable life vs. wild life line. Now you know that both sides have tradeoffs. After a lot of those kinds of experiences, you come to appreciate things you couldn’t appreciate before.

It also helps to think of life in terms of seasons. In this season, you might feel a lot of spontaneous adventures and freedom and social connections, so enjoy them while they’re here in spite of the instability. In the next, you might have more peace and find yourself really savoring the small, quiet moments.

Also, literally touching grass sometimes helps. Not kidding. Just try taking a few minutes every day to be present in the moment somewhere outdoors, somewhere with grass or a tree or some other kind of plant nearby. If you’re in a city, maybe go sit on a park bench for a few minutes each day or walk around your block. If you have a backyard, hang out there for a few minutes in the evenings. It might feel pointless or awkward at first, but over time it will turn into a nice moment that you enjoy each day. After a while it’s an instant satisfaction boost, particularly on sunny days.

Go to a local used book store and get a beginner book on Buddhism. Contentment is a state of mind.

the grass is greener where you water it

If the feeling is bothering you a lot, you need to dig. Try to find out what it is you’re hoping for from that other life, that’s apparently missing in your current one. If it isn’t that bad, it’s really, really common and you can honestly try to just distract yourself so you don’t repeatedly compare your life to a literal, and rather vague, fantasy. That’s not getting you anywhere.

I think a core thing is that people need a certain level of variety, some more than others, and still it’s really easy to get caught in a groove. Society is not built for that kind of enrichment.

Do you have a hobby or something?

“Now the thing that I call livin’ is just bein’ satisfied, with knowin’ I got no one left to blame.” – Gordon Lightfoot, “Carefree Highway”

I think a big part of happiness is rooted in learning what you can control, taking responsibility for it, and accepting what you can’t control.

Easier said than done sometimes. But, I tend to stress a lot less about a situation when I’ve sorted this out for myself.

Learn what you want and need. It comes but also changes with age.

If you don’t know who you are, who you want to be and what you’re meant to do here, how can you ever be satisfied? How can you know your reaching authentic, meaningful goals? 🤔