The Grass is always greener on the other side

I came across two quite different stories today. The first one is an anonymous confession of a 42-year-old on Reddit who is a successful dentist and a millionaire, married with two children. By all conventional measures, we can say that the guy is successful. But he is anything but happy.

“Now I’m in a place where I have chronic pain, a cheating wife, kids who don’t love me, a life of staring into mouths all day, a dull brain, no more passions and hopes, no real purpose in life.”

When he was in his 20s, the guy was passionate about maths, physics, and teaching. He wanted to do something that would help others. But his parents, and friends, talked him into becoming a dentist, an option that would get him respect and money. The dentistry didn’t satisfy his passion, instead, it gave him chronic back pain. But he did it for the money, which everyone convinced him would be eventually worth it.

He took the safe option and ended up hating his life.

After reading the post, I move to the comment section and came across a different story, a person who claimed to have followed his passion and tried to become a rockstar throughout his 20s. But he got nowhere, eventually, the passion ran out when real life took its toll

“now i have no skills that transfer into a real world job. and i don’t know how or where to even start”

So what moral does one take after reading the two stories?

The point isn’t about following your passion or not following it. The main issue is the fact that no matter where we are in life, we want to get to someplace else.

The first guy had concluded by saying that he would rather be broke but still following his passion.

The second guy wanted to just make a decent living, even if it meant working 9–5 in a cubicle.

The grass is always greener on the other side. You would always think that your life would have been better if you just took a different path. That’s because thinking that will give you some consolation since it puts the blame on the circumstances. But that’s all that it is, a trick that your mind plays on you. If you really want to be happy, you need to make the best of whatever you have and stop wanting more than you need,