The curiosity of greener grass

I’ve always thought that envy and jealousy were learned emotions. Somewhere around the adolescent years it seemed a desire for another’s life or possessions entered into the picture. As you grow up, the wisdom in the statement “The grass is always greener on the other side” makes more sense.

It turns out, I wasn’t quite right. Just about the time my daughter started crawling I noticed that babies seemed to have a fair amount of desire for another’s possessions. The surest way to get a kid crawling across the room was for another kid to have hold of a toy. At that stage I started to wonder at the “grass is always greener” statement. How many squabbles do parents break up in their lives over children fighting over a possession? Do they want it simply because the other one does too?

Could it possibly be that we are born with envy? Toddlers have an especially healthy dose of this trait, although sometimes I wonder if it is simply curiosity in disguise. Lately my daughter has discovered food envy. Anything on my plate inevitably looks better to her. With repeated exposure she would even reach for my raw broccoli, as long as it was on my plate. Try serving it to her on her own plate and its just a little tree to play with. Unsure if this is wise, I fumble on about how good it is that we are learning to share and let her take my food. It appears this is a family trait. My parents confess that when my brother and I were children they took to ordering things at restaurants for us that they wanted to eat, knowing that whatever they had, we would want.

As Thanksgiving approaches, it makes me think about the grass-is-always-greener statement again. In simplified terms, Thanksgiving is a time to take stock of what is already present in our lives and be grateful for it. Our grass is our own, even if our neighbors may seem to be greener. I can’t help but notice that just after we all come to terms with what we have, the next month we turn around and spend an entire month coveting things that we do not have but wish we did. It may be a flat screen TV or wishing for a far off loved one to be with us. But either way, I cannot help but wonder if we would start the year off in a healthier mindset if those mental activities were reversed.

The more I excessively dissect the “grass is always greener” sentiment I have come to the conclusion that I cannot believe an emotion like envy is something we are handed at birth. I’d like to believe that bad habits are something we learn. So perhaps instead what I witnessed as I watched my daughter race across the floor on her chubby knees was simply raging curiosity. And as we grow it is our task to turn that emotion into something healthier. Is our need to have something better, something perhaps our friends already have, what drives us to be smarter, faster, better? This year, should we be grateful for our innate curiosity, sometimes disguised as envy? If it will spur a just-learning baby to propel herself across a room, what else could envy teach us? If our neighbors grass truly is greener than ours, perhaps admiring it and asking what sort of products he uses on it will simply make our own grass that much brighter. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?

 

Previously published in "The Star," Grand Coulee, Washington. November 2, 2011