How often do we really get jealous?

The question no one ever asks one’s self. And it’s understandable. For many of us, it’s too painful to admit that our life is worse than someone else’s. And our inborn instinct tells us to avoid the pain at any cost. But in reality this question hunts us down many times a day, every day. Why? Because as many times as we have an opportunity to scroll down the social media accounts or news we are comparing ourselves to those people we see. It might not even be a conscious action; the thought might just pop up for a second: “Damn, he is so lucky…”, or “Wow, how come she has that so easily?”, or “I deserve it more than they do”.
Especially, in those days when nothing goes right (and we have enough of those days), we look at smiling faces of our fellow friends and realize that we are actually more unhappy then we thought.
Some rhetorical questions flood our minds at that exact moment. In reality, our “happy” friends might not even be so. Even when the life sucks, we don’t like to admit it and tend to show everyone how great our life actually is. Our generation made it OK to always stay well and happy and NOT OK to complain about life. But feeling down sometimes is totally acceptable, as well as sharing about our troubles with people who care is considered to be a healthy thing. But.. Coming back to the topic.
We are so conditioned to seek that quick fix from picking at social media like Facebook or Instagram that we don’t even notice how much time is spent on. Believe it or not, each time we look at someone’s happy face, we will have a very quick striking thought about why do they have such an amazing life and not me?.. Research shows that overusing social media is directly correlated to the development of depressive symptoms.
And, I love you!