The Grass is Always Greener

When Sean and I were in Charleston last week, THE thing to do was to wait outside the new Apple Store and hope to get in to play with all the pretty little jewel-like iPods and iPhones. Our rickshaw driver, Wes, told us at the opening the week before that more than 150 folks were standing there on King Street waiting in line. (Look, Wes has a cool tattoo of a rickshaw on his calf!)

Well, we got suckered in. We went just to look and came out with a new MacBook for me (to help with my freelance writing career, but so far, I've gone Facebooking, messed around with Garage Band and shopped on iTunes. What can I say, I love my new toy.) It was tax-free weekend in South Carolina and we also got a free printer as part of the deal.

Those Mac guys sure take any remarks about Mac products personally though. As we were buying the MacBook, we were chatting about all the different programs on the Mac, including iPhoto, which is amazing to help you create photo books for all the events in your life. We'd just used it to put together all our honeymoon photos. But I said, "I do wish they had larger format, 12x12 books available, though." He looked a little pissed and said a touch snidely, "Well, they say the grass is always greener." Sean and I giggled a little after he left to get our boxes.

But it makes you think, especially in your day to day life. We're all such a mass of desires and petty jealousies and wishes. A job that drives me up a wall may be someone else's whole reason for being. Another person's life might seem amazing from the outside, until you actually live it. This world of ours is endlessly complicated, frustrating, annoying---yet somedays you're so delirously happy that you feel like you could want for nothing else. I would love to keep that feeling with me always. Then the grass where I was would be the freshest, greenest-smelling, softest grass there ever was.