The Grass is always greener

USA or Russia: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence

I am not just talking metaphorically, I am talking about realities. Rottne, Småland: The other week I could see from the window of my study the following: a herd of cattle had broken through the fence and was just in the field below me, about fifteen of them. We know them well. There are about eighty animals in all, all black, of Dutch breed, and they move in a very big enclosed pasture-land, starting from here, just on the other side of the alleyway stretching about three kilometres to the north.

At lunchtime this particular day they had broken through the fence and quickly found their way to the field below us, which is cut twice every summer for hay; by now the field was indeed greener than on the side where the cattle reside, and very lush. So what I saw were these cattle enjoying this very lush and green grass, not at all worried about the fact that the farmer would soon come and force them back into their enclosure again. I’d had to contact the former and he came after a few minutes only. The scene again: slowly but easily the cows and bulls were brought back into the fold and only a few of the younger ones made any attempt to run elsewhere. In a few minutes it was all over.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. This time it was literally true and it went against the sense moral in the saying: out of envy you think that your neighbour has a better life than you in this or that respect, until you may find out that this is not so.

Here we have reason to undo the traditional sense moral and accept that at times the grass is greener on the other side and you should make an effort to get there.

I am thinking of the enormous amount of people migrating these days, away from a desperate situation to something that may hopefully be better.

A striking example of long-term migration that in many ways have succeeded in a lasting way is the one to the United States. Not taking into account here in this text the fact that the indigenous people on this continent were pushed aside or made extinct and regardless of the political stature of this giant, this in many ways unique creature of a state, one must admit that until today millions of people have migrated to the shores of this land and have found refuge and a home there.

The vast majority of the several million people who migrated from Sweden in the latter part of the 19^th century and during the beginning of the 20^th, also seems to have found a new home and that the grass, in a literal sense, economically etc., was much greener that side. The truth is that most of them “made it” on the other side and the vast majority of the emigrants did not bother to come back to the fatherland at all or only very infrequently and then for a very short time only.

This is of course an example of how it literally is greener on the other side and that it may be the right thing to get there.

Secondly one could also look at this saying in its reversal also metaphorically. The collapse of Soviet communism resulted in a Russia reborn taking one or two steps towards democracy. As the reconstruction and deconstruction of what was the Soviet Union was done top-down, and Gorbatchev is the leader to remember, there was very little of experience among the people as what might be a working democracy. But people tasted it and liked it and the majority of these I take it also thought it was indeed compatible with Russian culture, faith and life views in general. The democratic grass was very green, but now the metaphor goes back to my experience from what took place in the field below our house the other day – the cows and the bulls and the young animals willingly returned to where they normally are fenced in, once the farmer told them so.

The same seems to be the case with the majority of the Russian population, believing that Putin knows what is best for them, with or without democracy, and a crucial point of course is that his leadership pretends to be democratic while loathing the so-called Western style of grass roots democracy. So when the farmer calls the cattle willingly return back into the fenced-in area. The Russians have tasted the greener grass of democracy, and the potential and the creativity that this could entail; but so far they show great willingness to be towed back into the fold of traditional Russian tsarism in the guise of Vladimir Putin; even the Orthodox Church seems to belong to the willing, despite an incredible experience of being a free church during the revolutionary year of 1917 only, staying on inside the centuries long established fence.