Why the grass is always greener, the prejudiced are always right, and he really is planning on leaving you, he just hasn’t found the right time to tell you yet..

It’s a very well established phenomenon that we’re more likely to consider valid, attend to, and remember events that fulfill our expectations and prejudices than those which don’t fit into our world view. Then, when weighing up information in our mind, we respectively find more evidence in favour of our expectations than against them, thus reinforcing them.. [and repeat until done.]

Enter the internet, and all the information in the world to ignore to find that one scrap of ‘evidence’ to complete the support of your hypothesis.

Your job is more interesting than mine, my religion is more respectful than yours, your relationship is more exciting than mine, your grass is greener than mine. No. No, it’s not.

You do this. It might be in support of your political party, football team or religion; it might be that new study saying your particular vice isn’t so bad for you after all; or maybe the single bad review of the gig you were ill and missed; possibly that one facebook message your partner wrote someone else ‘proving’ they’re losing interest, (ignoring the text messages they sent you just that morning, of course).

Whatever we believe, we can make true.
..empirically with ‘evidence’ (sorta) .. or at the very least a discredited wikipedia edit from 2008..

And, lo!, we now have unecessary envy, jealousy, bias and narrow-mindedness all masquerading as truth and a competition for a perfect lawn that doesn’t exist.

And it’s not just the perfect lawn that doesn’t exist, it’s the competition.

We don’t need to do this. Life is a mixed bag, I honestly believe most of it evens out in the averages. What you lose here you gain there, there’s a cloud to every silver lining too, y’know.

So how about we stop ourselves the next time and challenge our minds to a more even balance.

“I know so and so just got that amazing promotion and pay rise.. but didn’t she also miss the film last week because she had to stay late.. and she has been looking so tired, and I really value having my evenings free to socialise..”

You know the stuff.

Your life is far more privileged than you know. Seek evidence for that. That one is probably true.