The theory of relativity

I'm not going to talk about Einstein's famous theory here, if that's what you're thinking. The relativity I'm referring to is our every day comparisons with all things that go on in our world, be it wealth, intelligence, beauty or just life in general. 

I used to have a career in investment banking. Broadly put, one of the fundamental skills required in investment banking or finance is one's ability to ascertain a value of an asset. One of the more common methods of doing so is to carry out a comparable analysis i.e. to benchmark an asset against other similar assets. Of course there are other technicalities involved, but I reckon you get the gist. 

Every day, we carry out our own comparable analysis. We log on to Facebook and see friends put up pics of a recent holiday, or declare their undying love for their partners, or speak of their new promotion. All these things make us compare them against what we have ourselves. For some, they're unperturbed. But many are affected by their apparent "shortcomings" after the almost automatic internal comparable analysis that has taken place. Why do we compare? Is there a need to compare? Do we really need some sort of justification/benchmark that our lives are better/worse than others? Are the lives of our friends really that much better or their postings merely mask what really goes on their lives? I read somewhere that a high percentage of Facebook users actually feel worse off about themselves after logging on.

The reason for this post is not about Facebook, but what I think of myself and how often I make comparisons of myself with others. I am still trying to figure out if these comparisons stem from the fact that I excelled very early on in life, especially through school and college, only to feel that I have progressively regressed since the start of my working life. To then see others, in particular those who were way "behind" me when I was excelling, being way ahead of me now, makes me question what went wrong, festers doubt in my abilities and has generally altered my once high self-esteem.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel though. I have a girlfriend who's anything like me. She lived most of her life doing only what she wanted to do and without a care in the world. She didn't care if the other girl was prettier or if her colleague had a nicer car. It was, by and large, what she thought of herself. She does not have a Facebook account. In fact, she dislikes social media. The only thing that matters to her are goals she sets for herself, and not any comparison of herself with another. She's successful, contented and most importantly...happy.