this side of the fence

As the old adage, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," indicates, it is only natural to believe that other people have it better. I don't think things are quite so simple, though. I think that, while most people believe the grass is greener elsewhere consciously, they are so attached to their life that they wouldn't trade it for the apparently greener grass of someone else's life.

I started thinking about this because of fantasy football. In one of my leagues the rules are configured to encourage trading players before the season starts. Even though the rules are set this way so that a fair trade would benefit everyone involved, there are hardly ever more than two or three trades. This is because most people overvalue the players that they have and this causes them to be unable to set terms that someone else in the league is able to agree to.

I have been on both sides of the metaphorical fence at different times in my life. I have been the person who saw someone else who appeared fortunate in different areas of life and thought that it would be cool to be in that person's shoes. I am aware of a few situations where people were jealous of me due to something that they thought made my life better or easier. The obvious response to this jealousy is that the jealous person doesn't know what problems the person on the other side of the fence has to deal with. That response is not really the point of this post, though.

Like a person who is unwilling to trade a mediocre fantasy football player away because he or she overvalues that player, I think that most people would choose the hardships of their own lives rather than those of others if they were really actually given a choice. I am not saying that someone who has lost a child or a spouse wouldn't want them back. There are certainly exceptions and this is not a hard and fast rule. I am saying, though, that most people take ownership of the things in their lives and that causes those things to become a part of who they are. For example, if I were to trade my hardships for someone else's that would be the equivalent of giving up a large part of who I am.

One of my Facebook friends a while back lamented about how hard it is to be a nice guy. I agree. Life is seriously stacked against the nice guys and in favor of the inconsiderate jerks, but the reason that he is a nice guy is that at least on some level because he gets value in it. Not to negate the spiritual reasoning for being nice but, at a minimum, a significant part of what keeps him from being a selfish jerk is that it would be denying part of what his true self is, and that would be more painful than dealing with the drawbacks of being nice.

So, if you look at someone else's burden green with envy about how easy they have it, you have to ask would you really lose what identifies you as you to make your life a little easier if you actually had the choice. Could you really toss your hardships for someone else's? Even though I am not fond of the troubles I have had in my life, I don't think that I would.