When is the grass really greener?

Long time, no see 🙂 And yes, I'm back with my current mood posts.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the syndrome «"Grass is greener.". This very human tendency to believe that life would be simpler elsewhere, in another city, another job, in short, another version of oneself. I concluded, quite wisely, that elsewhere wasn't an improved version of life. Just another version.

Except that life has a sense of humor.

Because these past few weeks, I've found myself literally in a postcard. The kind of place you scroll through on Instagram with a sigh on a Sunday evening. The sea, a blue that's almost too blue, the umbrella pines, the terraces where no one seems to be in a hurry, the golden light of late afternoon that makes everyone a little more beautiful.

The grass, this time, really was greener. So naturally, a question popped into my head: what happens when fantasy matches reality?

First, let's be honest: it's just as beautiful as in the photos

I'm not going to play the disappointment card. That would be dishonest, and a bit annoying.

It's beautiful. Truly. There are mornings when I open the shutters and stand there, a cup of coffee in hand, wondering how it's possible for a place to be so photogenic without a filter. There are evenings when the sun sinks onto the water and, for a few minutes, nothing else exists.

And I savored it. The walks along the water, the little alleyways that smell of jasmine even in October, the Sundays spent doing nothing but watching the sea. That feeling of being exactly where, a few months earlier, I would have dreamed of being.

So yes: sometimes, the grass really is greener. It's not just a mirage.

What the postcard doesn't show

But a postcard is a frame. A carefully chosen rectangle. And what struck me was everything that's right next to the frame.

There's the suitcase that's never fully unpacked. The laundry drying on a chair because we don't really feel at home. The evenings when, despite the magnificent view, we eat a ready-made meal in front of our phone because we're too tired to enjoy anything.

There's also this slightly strange loneliness, the kind you feel in places that are too beautiful. Because beauty is meant to be shared. A sublime sunset seen alone is beautiful… but there's no one to tell it to. «" Look at ". We ended up sending a photo to three people, who replied with a heart two hours later.

And then there's life, plain and simple. Emails, bills, doubts, bouts of fatigue. They don't stay quietly at home while we live the dream. They travel with us, in the cabin, without extra baggage fees.

The most disconcerting thing: you even get used to the beautiful

That's probably what surprised me the most. The first week, I stopped at every street corner to take a picture. The second week, a little less. The third week, I walked past the sea thinking about my shopping list.

Psychologists have a name for this: hedonic adaptation. Our brain gets used to everything, the best and the worst, and eventually returns to its usual level of satisfaction. The scenery changes, but after a while, our mood finds its rhythm again.

In other words, even when the grass is truly greener, we eventually stop seeing it. It just becomes… grass.

And honestly, it's a bit vexing. We dream of a place for years, we finally get there, and our brain has the audacity to find it normal after two weeks.

So, what does that teach me?

I think I was half right in my first post. Elsewhere isn't an improved version of life, that's true. But sometimes, it's a more beautiful version. Brighter. And that's no small thing.

Simply put, a setting alone doesn't solve anything. It doesn't replace the people we love, it doesn't erase fatigue, nor does it give meaning to what has none. It provides a framework. What we put within it remains our own business.

So I decided to do something very simple: relearn how to look. Force myself, each day, to notice a detail I hadn't seen the day before. The color of the water at 8 a.m. A dog running on the deserted beach at the end of October. Not for the story, just for myself.

Because perhaps the real lesson lies there. The grass is never greener elsewhere or here. It's greener where you take the time to look at it.

And you, have you ever experienced that moment when the dream becomes reality… and when you have to learn to see it again?