“The grass is always greener on the other side…” I notice the tendency in myself and others to overrate what we don’t have. It seems we’re waiting for external conditions to fall into place (things we achieve, own, become…time and the weather!) so we can feel better on the inside. It seems that the grass really is greener on the other side, until we realize: it can’t work both ways! It can’t actually be greener.

I recently met an Italian woman who asked me what I do for a living.
“I help people learn Finnish.”
“Oh, so you’re a Finnish teacher?”
“Sort of, not exactly. I teach people the process of learning Finnish.”
She looked at me quizzically, “But why would I need the process? I can go to classes to learn Finnish.”
In an ideal world, you would go to Finnish class and – voila! You’d speak Finnish.
If that were the case, you wouldn’t be reading this…

I believe every single person and being I come across knows something that I don’t know, and vice versa. For this reason, every interaction is a chance to learn something new, for ourselves and the people we interact with. This post explains my thinking and its far-reaching implications.