The Anna Karenina Fix by Viv Groskop

Author:Viv Groskop
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241981269
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

7. How to Live with the Feeling That the Grass is Always Greener: Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov

(Or: Don’t keep going on about Moscow)

‘Oh my God, I dream of Moscow every night. I’m just like a lunatic.’

I have often felt that what I suffer most from in life is the sense that the grass is always greener on the other side. This is a combination of two things: first, the feeling that everyone else has got it better than me (yes, I know, boo hoo, let me get out the world’s tiniest violin), and, second, the idea that if only I were somewhere else, everything would be fine (yes, I know this is foolish, but I’m just being honest). The danger of this way of thinking is summed up by two cautionary Russian proverbs: ‘If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one’ and ‘As long as the sun shines, one does not ask for the moon.’ Or as my grandmother said the time I wanted a third jam tart (there were three flavours and I hadn’t tried lemon curd yet), ‘Don’t be greedy.’

We all know the feeling that everyone else is having a better time than us. It’s ‘if only’ syndrome. If only you were somewhere else instead of being where you are. If only you had got that job instead of it being given to that woman you hate. If only you could be in two places at once. We even think this way when we’re happy. ‘Things are good but … wouldn’t it be nice to be on the balcony of a flat in Paris with a view of the Sacré-Cœur?’ Or, as they say in Russian, ‘Life is better there where we are not.’ This, said in an extremely categorical and depressing voice, is probably the best Russian saying of all time. Is there any more fatalistic thought in human existence?

The problem is, no matter how good we have it, the grass genuinely does seem greener elsewhere. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Chekhov’s play Three Sisters, where all the three sisters really want in life is to get back to Moscow, scene of their childhood. Moscow represents a reaction against their present life – which they don’t want – and a promise of something better. They want Moscow, Moscow, Moscow. They say it enough times. But what they also want, crucially, is to be somewhere else other than where they are right now. Sound familiar?

It’s human nature to think this way and it has no doubt always been thus. But it’s perhaps legitimate to argue that, in the modern era, this feeling can become so acute it’s almost unbearable. After all, up until about a hundred years ago, we all had fairly predetermined roles in life. Your fortunes might wax and wane, but you were more or less confined to the circumstances you were born in, whether you liked it or not. You could pine for some other kind of life but you had no real chance of achieving it.

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