From CGI member Morgan.. CGI is RMN's readers forum, come join us!

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How do we present ourselves? What masques (I'm waaaaaay too pretentious to spell it 'masks') do we wear? How true is our presentation to what we really are? How much do we spend in time and resources to put forth a facade of what isn't, and is it worth it?

I keep it to a minimum. I do NOT try to look better than I do, I wear cheap clothes until they're no longer street legal, I drive an old beat up car that I wish got better mileage, I lick my plate, cuss like a sailor, challenge people to belching contests and actually win on occasion, and openly admit the only good child is a cooked child. I wouldn't pretend to be anything else other than what I am.

Well, I wouldn't approach a LEO and say, "YO! HOW GOES THE EXTORTION RACKET?!", but that's a whole nudda post that I may or may not make one day.

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The age of envy: how to be happy when everyone else's life looks perfect

Social media has created a world in which everyone seems ecstatic – apart from us. Is there any way for people to curb their resentment?

We live in the age of envy. Career envy, kitchen envy, children envy, food envy, upper arm envy, holiday envy. You name it, there’s an envy for it. Human beings have always felt what Aristotle defined in the fourth century BC as pain at the sight of another’s good fortune, stirred by “those who have what we ought to have” – though it would be another thousand years before it would make it on to Pope Gregory’s list of the seven deadly sins.

But with the advent of social media, says Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan who studies the impact of Facebook on our wellbeing, “envy is being taken to an extreme”. We are constantly bombarded by “Photoshopped lives”, he says, “and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant.”