What’s your example of the grass is always greener? (1 Viewer)

Basically something you have that others would want, but you dislike it for some reason.

For me it’s having thick hair. I understand that there are benefits and why people with especially thin hair could be jealous but 1) oh my god the shedding and 2) oh my god what a pain it is to wash, especially when dyeing it. And it really gets puffy quickly. I can’t say I’d want to have especially thin hair, but if it was taken down a few notches I wouldn’t mind.

LoveYooShaSha said:

"The grass is always greener" isn't even the saying, it's actually "The grass isn't always greener" meaning what you think you want isn't always the thing you think is so great and you find out you actually had it pretty good with what you DID have after all: so kindof opposite/reverse of your OP, ie you think you would like not to hv thick hair n hv thin hair instead, I don't want to jinx by stating the consequences.

I can't rlly think of a saying tat matches yr OP, sour grapes isn't it but sthg along the line of you hv nice grapes to eat but you would actually prefer not so sweet grapes instead. Just FYI as a linguistics layman(I might be wrong in my understanding both re: yr OP n the greener grass saying.

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Both work here, but the original idiom is “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”, because it comes from a story where the character does think it’s truly greener. “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side” is a step further, now it’s not the idiom itself but a comment about the meaning and lesson that idiom gives. Both are common and have their own uses, I just happened to use the idiom itself for my title.

Chiara said:

I have like super-fine hair that frizzes easily... can we trade? lol

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We do have the frizzing thing in common in that case

LoveYooShaSha said:

You're right: I was wrong.

But my point still stands I think; the idiom's meaning is that what you think you want is not always better. Ok googled and its origin is "the ass and the gardener" where a work animal thinks life is hard and longs for a change(either praying to Jupiter or just in its heart. Lo change comes and the animal works harder than before. Or it's winter and the ass longs for different season forthcoming but summer brings more and harder work, and so on and so forth.

my post was just to comment that "greener grass" idiom has opposite or reverse meaning of your OP: you believe thinner hair is preferable to you n tats your whole post. I just stated tat "greener grass" idiot's meaning is it's not always better than wat you have currently. In your case thinner hair might ACTUALLY be better so I think the idiom is opposite of wat yr point is.

Rn there's nthg I can think of tat illustrates your OP better or correctly but then u wouldn't hv a catchy thread title LOL. I concede yr correctness in both the original version n yr choice of catchy thread title but I do standby my original post in the meaning of the idiom being "don't always wish for sthg different" it might be (or always is) worse.

srry I just can't back down when I think im right n believe im standing on firm ground(the meaning of the idiom).

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I get what you mean, I was just using it to reference the idiom and existence of the concept in the title and went with that because I hear being used. Even in contexts where the person truly means that it isn’t greener I hear most people say “the grass is always greener” in a slightly ironic way to reference the concept and point out the issue, rather than outright saying it isn’t greener. And also because there are in fact people who say how lucky I am to have thick hair, which was actually the main point here because they think it’s great to have thick hair, but there are actually issues with it. So to them the grass is indeed greener on my side. Whereas me not necessary wanting thin hair was kind of a side point. So either can work imo, but I just went with the one I actually hear and also wasn’t too fussed about it because I knew I’d need to explain in the op anyways to actually get the idea across.