chasing shadows; missing light

Roasting marshmallows in Vermont

We're insatiable.

It starts small, a whisper of this isn't enough. A taste lingers on the tongue, honey-sweet, but even before it fades, we crave the next indulgence. And we'll do anything to get it, not because we need it, not because our lives depend on it, but because we're haunted by the emptiness of having too little.

It's the allure of the green grass – somehow, another person's grass always seems greener than yours. We stretch our hands across the fences trying to reach their side, eyes fixed on the shimmer of what we don’t have. The distance warps it – makes it shine like salvation. Yet when we finally step across, our footsteps flatten the green to brown, and the shimmer leaps somewhere further.

This hunger is older than we are, and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. It’s why the first humans left their caves, why they painted on walls, why they reached for fire and didn’t stop until they had captured the sun.

But when do we decide we have enough? When can we finally breathe, stop reaching, stop climbing, and simply be? We are creatures of comparison; creatures of forward motion so strong that no gravity can stop us.

Perhaps the problem isn’t the hunger itself, but the way we feed it. We chase quantity, grasping at handfuls upon handfuls, when maybe what we truly need to do is taste deeply, to linger with what we have, savoring it until it reveals the fullness we so often overlook. Indeed, sometimes we're so busy wanting and dreaming for more that we don't even realize we're in the middle of a situation we used to pray for.

There's this social paradox – the unknown wants fame, while the famous wants privacy. The young wish to grow old, while the old wish they could be young again. The poor want to become rich while the rich wish for the peace they lost chasing wealth.

We're living like there's a test, a score we have to achieve. To find perfection in the imperfection of what is. To love the frayed edges of our lives – that's the true test.

The green grass is fake. No one has it all, but most have enough. If only they just stopped and took a moment to see it.