As a lifelong Phillies fan, maybe I have a positive bias towards Doug Glanville - but I must say his latest column is fantastic.  He talks about the unending pressure many Major League Baseball players face in "keeping up with the Jones'."  He speaks specifically about professional baseball players, but the story is applicable to anyone who has felt this pressure - which I'm pretty sure includes everyone at some point in their life.

I highly recommend reading the entire column, but here is an excerpt:

Soon you are getting farther away from your original tastes and closer to what you think a major-leaguer is supposed to live like. It takes a lot of introspection to realize that as you are “upgrading” you hit an invisible peak and then hit this precipitous downhill slope of declining benefits — because this particular home plate keeps moving, teasing you into needing to go just a little further.

and another:

We call it advancement, the act of getting closer to something ahead or in front of us. But when we lock in on that target as the next step, sometimes we forget what got us here. The need to demonstrate success, the show and the glitter, all play into why we can end up chasing illusions that take us away from our true selves.