I sat on the back veranda, watching the cloud formations pass me by; listening to the birdcalls; taking in the aroma of 5 roses I had just cut from the front garden: 2 mauve, 1 pink and 2 yellowy-orange ones; eating the most perfect avocado on toast and 2 fried eggs for brunch after swimming 1 kilometre. I couldn’t help thinking that I felt the most happy and content I have felt for about the last 15 months.

I started to think about the expression: “The grass is greener on the other side.” I’ve heard equally as many times, that the grass is not greener on the other side. Sometimes we have unrealistic expectations of the things we want: of how happy those things or circumstances will make us. Sometimes we are jealous of other people’s grass and think it is greener than ours, but they are often just as jealous of our grass, for different reasons.

On the movie “Cool Runnings” the coach says to one of the team mates: “If you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.” I guess in this regard it is good to learn how to love and accept yourself without needing to achieve or attain something that you ‘think’ is going to make you happy or better able to love yourself.

Having said that, I still want to acknowledge that sometimes the grass is greener on the other side, and that both of these expressions have validity. For me, the grass is greener now than it was a year ago because I have been able to work through my grief over the death of my mother and move on from a place of feeling very lost and empty without her in my life.

I also feel that the grass is greener in my life being self-employed rather than working for a boss. But that was not true at first – not while I spent two years struggling immense financial stress while I trying to grow my business. I could have given up and it’s only because I believed I was ‘getting to the other side’ so-to-speak, that I did not give up and now reap the benefits.

So at times the grass is greener, and sometimes the grass is more about the journey than arriving somewhere, and sometimes the grass only looks greener to your eyes but in reality, it may not be. And sometimes … the grass is what you make of it. If you call it green and rich and healthy for long enough, you’ll start to believe it. If you express gratitude for what it does represent, rather than focusing on what it lacks, you may be able to choose happiness there. If it is truly the worst grass you ever saw, then have hope that things can and will get better because life moves in seasons and cycles. The darkness of depression or grief, does not have to last forever, if you continue to head in the direction of the beautiful field you want to arrive at.