Any-Mom » The Grass is Greener

The Grass is Greener

01.20.2009 | Author: OrganizerMom | Posted in Pick Your Battles

I pretty much suck at making New Year’s resolutions. Well, let me clarify. I’m good at making them but I can’t keep them. Oh, I can keep them for a month or two, but invariably, I degenerate into my nasty old habits. For example, for the past ten years, I’ve resolved to lose weight. Guess what? I’ve gained weight every year. I’ve also resolved to exercise more. That one I’m still working on. I sort of have to renew that one every few weeks after I continually relapse back into my couch potato status. There was one successful resolution: I decided to give up my daily Coca-Cola habit. This one took me an entire 6 months to accomplish but I finally beat it down to one per week. So one success for a score of failures. Not the best record.

This year, however, I have a resolution that I think I can keep. I resolve to be more content with my life circumstances and less envious of others. It’s easy to look at others and think that they have more money, more fun, more love, more whatever. But sometimes the image our friends and neighbors project is very different from what goes on behind the scenes. The person driving that luxury SUV may be behind on the car payments or mortgaged to the hilt. The stylishly dressed woman with the beautiful kids may be trapped in a dissolving marriage.

I started thinking about this resolution last fall while thinking about our close friends. Let’s call them LawyerDad and TennisMom. LawyerDad got a new, high-paying, high-powered job last year with a salary that is considerably more than twice that of my teacher husband’s. My husband and I wallowed in envy over this for some time. Eventually, though, we began to see that the new job was putting a strain on the family. The commute is long: about an hour and fifteen minutes. The hours are long: LawyerDad arrives at work before 9am and doesn’t get home until 8pm or later. As the new guy on the job, he is under tremendous pressure to learn the ropes quickly while performing his job duties with competence. Needless to say, his blood pressure is showing the effects of this stressful situation. Meanwhile, TennisMom stays at home managing the household and the children, essentially acting as a single parent much of the day, and when LawyerDad travels, she’s on her own for days at a time.

I can’t help but contrast this with my own situation. Even though we are barely eking out a living on my husband’s skimpy non-profit salary, and the job can be difficult at times, my husband gets home every day at 5pm, well before dinner, and in plenty of time to interact with our son before bed. We eat dinner together every night, and we discuss the events of our day. My husband reads to our son every night and is there to tuck him in and arrange his bears just so. My husband has summers off, permitting endless hours of play and family time – what a gift for a child to have both parents around all summer! We also have great health insurance and a pension due us upon retirement.

I repeat these facts over and over to myself anytime I feel the great green monster of envy whispering negative thoughts into my brain. No, we aren’t making the big bucks, and you won’t see me in a Lexus anytime soon, but my son knows his daddy and has a strong relationship with him. We spend hours of fun family time together and we enjoy each other and our little world. So I cling to my mantra of Haves and shrug off the Have Nots, just as I shrugged off my Coke-a-day addiction a few years back. This is one resolution I plan to keep.