green, green grass

all kids have particular tendencies that cause parents to have to repeat and repeat and repeat the same set of principles, commands, lectures.  when i was the baby-version of myself, i was typically told "keep it on the level" and "stop overreacting".  no matter what i was doing or experiencing, the right side of my brain was typically in overdrive perceiving it all in some grand hyperbolic motion picture of the actual events.  i was so excited, so angry, so in love...whatever it was, it was all-consuming.  one of the main ways this over-excited element of my personality has come into play has been in regards to where i am at any given time.  it always just seems...amazing.  wherever i am, i am amazed.

it seems to me that one of the most over-worked phrases on the planet is that 'the grass is always greener'.  but no matter where i am i am always just struck by the fact that the grass is way greener where i am.  i'm looking at the grass other people are standing on or that has been promised to me in some future time, and even though i'm way curious about that grass, i'm typically convinced that where i'm at is where the grass is greenest.  

i understand that this must seem like it is just fabulous.  how happy must i be seeing as the grass is so supremely green wherever i find myself?  the trouble is, life keeps encouraging us to move about.  you need to go to school, to work, to play.  and, being that i am a creature of over-excitement and impulse, whenever i got the chance to go somewhere for just about anything if there was an option to go somewhere i'd never lived before i took it.  then the next thing i know, i'm 26 (eww) and i have this list of places where i've lived and...i love them all.  i want to be in them all all the time.  and this is precisely when the grass being so green starts to make things complicated for me.

now don't get me wrong - this is all just great.  in fact, i like to think i'm beyond lucky that every time I look around I’m like WOAH THIS GRASS RIGHT HERE IS THE GREENEST GRASS EVER! and, as i've noted, this happens all the time (well…except with boys.  In that case, I’m always like WOAH ALL THE GRASS IS EXTREMELY GREEN, ALL OF IT, IT’S WAY TOO GREEN.  (…well that grass over there isn’t QUITE so green…)), so i know wherever i go i’m bound to end up feeling very happy no matter what.  the problem arises because I end up having a great deal of inner turmoil right around the point in time when I have to start packing up my suitcase and hit the ol’ dusty trail once again.

when i was 22 i went to quebec for the summer.  i was originally way too psyched to go – in fact, in typical emily fashion i’m quite sure i screamed with giddy madness when I opened the letter telling me i got the bursary, as if i had won the lottery or the elixir of love or something else – and then when it was finally time to go, i had no interest in leaving my little seaside city for the summer.  i arrived in la belle province and had no desire to be there.  and then suddenly, out of the blue, i looked around me and saw that the grass under my feet was emerald city green, shiny, magical.  i was in this little city with 150 people i didn’t know, trying my best not to insult anybody in my broken, constantly-being-botched-up french, and i just suddenly felt on top of the world. 

of course, the experience wasn’t perfect and i made a few boo boos and bruised a couple elbows along the way.  but I can recall this day – this moment, really – of walking by myself down along the lake and heading downtown to see harry potter vi (in english – get real!) with “so many miles” by sarah slean playing on my iPod  (probably way too loudly – everyone turn down your headphones!!!!!  you’re probably ruining your eardrums and hearing and you don’t even know it!) and i was at my best.  everything foreign, sun shining, harry potter awaiting me: nothing would ever probably instill this sense of strength, ability, capacity in me again.

then, as all things do, my little french escape was over.  everybody made passionate promises about cuba new year and reunions - me more than anybody.  but slowly, surely, i returned to a different mix and noticed that right here, right underneath my feet in these old familiar corridors, practice rooms, recital halls the grass was shimmery and again all i could see was that the other side of the fence was good, too, but not better than this.  

so what then does this all mean?  i can typically now go forth assuming that wherever i wind up i'll be pleased as punch no matter what.  but there must be more than just complacent acceptance of my default state of happiness!  

placing my finger on this "the-grass-is always-extremely-green" syndrome from which i suffer has made me consider relationships differently.  when i leave, i need to be able to look back and know that all my moments were as replete with jade luminosity as they ever could have been.  it's encouraged me to stay up late and have a heart-to-heart when i'm exhausted and to take photos and to be over-exited and not keep it on the level so that my moments just scream with honesty.  if everything can be wonderful anyway, i want to push the boundaries of our happiness in these interconnected little segments of time - of these present moments - so that when i look back, even though the grass where i am is extraordinarily soft, fragrant, perfect, i know those little pockets of space when i was elsewhere were as green as they could have been.  

i know soon i have to say ta ta to this little london life of mine.  the conflict is roaring inside where i just long to not have to leave -  but look how happy we are, can't we just stay here forever?  but when my feet finally make it back to that little island in the atlantic, i know it will set in - the full view of a shining field of green, green grass.  until that moment, i want to admire the lushness of this little nook of time - glass of wine, best of friends and overexcitement in tow.