A Metaphor

I drive by cow pastures a lot on my way to various places and I've noticed something about cows. Some of them strain to reach the grass outside the fence even when the grass that's easier to reach is perfectly okay, at least from my point of view. I don't eat grass and I'm not a cow, so I don't know for certain. But since other cows don't strain to reach the outside grass, the grass they can easily reach can't be that bad.

It's a lot like people, actually, so i wonder if it's an eternal truth. I know they say the grass is always greener on the other side, but it's not just that. Some people try really hard to get at the greener grass even though they're only able to nibble at the verges, but some people seem perfectly happy to eat the local grass. Not everyone wants what they can't have, and of the people who want it, not everyone tries for what they can't have.

We need both kinds of people, and both kinds are annoying at times. The people who eat the easy grass even though it's covered in cow crap will always be happy with grass as long as it's there. The people who strain to reach the two inches of grass outside the fence ignore the masses of perfectly good grass which is theirs for the taking. Without people to use up the resources we already have and take for granted, we would probably not get the best bang for our buck, but without people to try to reach other pastures, we'd never... well, we'd never get grass that didn't have cow crap on it.

It's not much of a metaphor, since there are cows which will cheerfully lean through fences and then walk out to find more grass. Sometimes even the cows who are happy to stay behind and chew cud most of the time are enticed into going out of the pasture through the hole in the fence. All the cows wind up somewhere they shouldn't be, and the best thing that can happen is that they don't do too much damage before the farmer realizes it.

Humans don't have a farmer to see that the fence is broken, and a lot of times that gets us into trouble. But sometimes our pasture was too small anyway. And many of us are smarter than cows.