FOMO, JOMO, and YOLO

Since the pandemic began, I’ve heard from various people that they are no longer mired in what modern parlance calls FOMO: Fear of Missing Out, or what Søren Kierkegaard more elegantly called, “the despair of too much possibility.” Clearly it is easier to not be mired in wistfulness or jealousy about what is happening out there, when in fact, nothing, is happening out there. But these people aren’t just noticing the absence of FOMO in their lives, they are simultaneously noticing the arrival of JOMO: Joy of Missing Out.

My friend who had a social engagement every night pre-pandemic, is actually reveling in watching TV on her couch. My friend who went out of town every weekend, is truly enjoying slow walks around the neighborhood instead. People, myself included, who used to lead busy, “keeping up with the Jones’s kinds of lives,” are in fact noticing some real benefits to a quieter, slower pace.

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ll know that a core theme that I struggle with in my own life is: paradox of choice. I want this, that, and I’d like the other too. It is a wildly privileged lament, and an obnoxious one at that given the backdrop of a pandemic, but none of those facts make it go away. Given that I am only one person, I cannot have this, that and the other. And being human with a very human mind, I often convince myself that the thing I am not doing is THE thing I should be doing, and if only I’d done that thing then my life would be just right. This is the beginning of my personal yellow brick road into one of my most frequented rabbit holes. It’s not so much fear of missing out on a particular event, but rather a fear of missing out on another life--a ghost life—that I could imagine leading. 

But this particular (malignant) thought pattern has been blessedly silenced as the world has slowed this spring. With no options to gnaw on, the beast of FOMO is subdued. Along with friends who have similarly felt a silencing of this part of them in the wake of the stay-at-home orders, we’ve wondered, will it last? Will we continue to breathe life into JOMO—into the smaller, quieter, close at hand joys.

I fear, for me, it will not last. Because even though the city I live in is very much still staying at home, much of the rest of the country and globe is not. People are headed to the beach and to the mountains and over to see friends. Sanctioned, or not, people are out and about again. And so my particular beast of FOMO is rising again from hibernation, and a very fetal JOMO is quickly losing pace.

At its root, FOMO is about comparison. Comparison is a dirty habit, but one that we humans, as social animals, all engage in. In Alain de Botton’s book, Status Anxiety, he points out:

“Modern populations have shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough.

He goes on to say:

“Status Anxiety is the feeling that we might, under different circumstances, be something other than what we are—a feeling inspired by exposure to the superior achievements of those whom we take to be our equals—that generates anxiety and resentment.

Status anxiety and schadenfreude (the German term for delight in someone else’s misfortune) go hand in hand. And together, they are part of the underbelly of FOMO. Of course, you might just be really be sad about missing out on an event or experience—but often the sadness of missing out on the event is accompanied (even eclipsed) by the worry about what the missing out means about you.

 YOLO—You Only Live Once, is another popular acronym, that has been adopted as a rallying cry for “just doing it” (whatever it is), and as a pardon for “just doing it” (no matter how destructive it is). For those of us afflicted with unhealthy doses of both FOMO and YOLO, the fallout is constantly feeling like you aren’t doing enough, not today, and not with your life in general.

 Alain de Botton diagnoses this ill in this way:

“The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

Our expectations about what life might be like, are crippling. I realize this isn’t true for everyone. Some people have well developed JOMO, and aren’t inflicted with so many FOMO and YOLO tendencies. This post is not for you. This post is for those of you, like me, who suffer from ridiculous expectations about what a Thursday night should look like—about what a life should look like. This post is for those of you who have felt some relief in the pandemic reducing your expectations—in feeling “let off the hook” of who you are supposed to be and what you are supposed to be doing as a side effect to the human race being brought to it’s knees by a virus.

I want to hold on to what I learned when the world got quiet. Because outside my door, things are growing louder by the day, and I know how hard it is to bring lessons from another time into the present. Even though from a public health prospective the world should still be quiet, it isn’t. People are going out and doing different things. They are taking pictures, and sharing them. And I will look at some of them, and I will feel FOMO and YOLO rising like bile in my throat. And I hope (pray really—to what I’m not sure) that I will be able to summons JOMO—to remember that in fact, I can be happy in a quieter life.

In April I sat out under the tree in my backyard that was full of blossoms and I drank a cup of tea, and I felt deeply content. I felt lucky. I felt happy.

The blossoms are off now, replaced by bright green leaves. The warm breeze is just right tonight. And the bowl of ice cream next to me is delicious. It is a night for feeling content. Lucky. Happy.

Nothing, and everything, has changed in a month.

As is perennially true for me, it is my mind, not my life, that needs help. May JOMO survive as the world grows louder. May JOMO grow and grow.