The Grass is Just as Green

Jealousy is a natural human emotion. And so long as you are human, it is natural to feel jealous of others.

Because the grass is always greener on the other side.

But upon further inspection, is the grass really all that greener? Or is it simply another shade of green altogether?

About a month ago, we were made to write speeches in class, and one girl's speech was exactly about this. Quoting someone else, she said something along the lines of, "If you are going to be jealous of someone's abilities, be jealous of all the hardships they had to go through in order to get there."

No one really gets a free pass in life. Some people have more money. Some people are naturally pretty. Some people are extremely bright. But no one is especially perfect, and everyone has their own problems, regardless of how flawless or superb they seem.

Every person you meet is made up of every single experience that took place in their lives up until now. And if you consider all the traumatic and upsetting things that have happened in your own life, you can only assume that the other has gone through at least as many horrible events.

This is not to say that some people have it worse off than others, because we all know that the world isn't fair. But in general, most people are on a pretty equal level of average.

So why am I bringing this up all of a sudden? Because I am surrounded by foreigners who speak Japanese so much better than I do, and this in itself is an extremely frustrating thing. But it isn't fair to be jealous of them. Most of them are Korean, and their vocabulary and grammar are extremely similar. Others are Chinese, and don't have to spend as much time learning characters. And every now and then you'll find a random white kid who is just naturally amazing at languages. But some of them are older than me. Some of them have never gone to university. Some of them have had to undergo mandatory time in the army. Some of them sleep throughout class because of how they spend so much time working part-time jobs in order to support themselves.

And here I am, at 23, with a Bachelor's degree from a good university, fluent in two extremely important world languages, and here thanks to a supporting family. This isn't to say that life is easy. Because life isn't easy regardless of what you have. But at the end of the day, I really have nothing to complain about.