FOMO — Fear of missing out
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FOMO is a new word that was recently added to the Oxford dictionary, because though it started as an informal slang, the feeling that FOMO describes is very common among young people today.
FOMO abbreviation BrE /ˈfəʊməʊ/; NAmE /ˈfoʊmoʊ/
fear of missing out (a feeling of worry that an interesting or exciting event is happening somewhere else.)
Example — We all live Internet lives, and when we see everyone else having more fun than us, we experience anxiety and FOMO.
I am a 30-year-old Indian man, married for 5 years, living and working in Singapore. I make a decent amount of money and can afford a good house, foreign holidays, and a lifestyle that very few Indians can. Yet, I rarely have a good night’s sleep. Each night is filled with regret and remorse about my past. I feel miserable when I open any social media app, be it Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, or even LinkedIn! It used to affect me so much that for the last year I had uninstalled all social media apps from my phone. It was like a virtual suicide. You might wonder why. I will tell you.
I am the kind of person who at any point in time is either “regretting about his past” or “worrying about his future”. A few months back I saw a Facebook post about one of my schoolmates who bought a sea-facing apartment in Mumbai. The next day I saw someone who had a destination wedding in Bali. It instantly pulled me back into the vicious cycle of regret. Why did I not work hard in school and get into an IIT or IIM, so I could buy a house like that! Why did I not manage my finances better so that I wouldn’t have to settle for a mediocre wedding? On the other hand, when I see people who are older than me, that have got citizenship or PR in a developed country like the US or UK, or people who have made a lot of money in their job and are living like a king in India, I go into a state of self-doubt. Will I be able to achieve what they have achieved? I start doubting my capabilities, and it pulls me into depression.
I never realize that there are millions of people in the world with terminal diseases who would not survive this weekend. There are millions who have to go to work on Christmas and New year. There are several thousand who are going to prison this weekend and won’t be able to see their loved ones for a long long time. If I compare myself with these people, I am at a much better place.
This feeling of worthlessness affects so many young people today. People don’t appreciate the present because they are not able to take their minds off the past and the future. So what do you do? How do you come out of this cycle of hurting yourself? Try being spiritual? Well, it is a good option, but not everyone is able to choose a spiritual path. People who are atheists can not take this path. The best way is to accept the present and making the most out of what you have in the present.
If you have got only a lemon with you today, then don’t cry thinking about your friend who has a box of strawberries. Rather, cut the lemon, add some sugar, soda, and mint leaves and make a nice lemonade out of it.
If you keep crying about the strawberries, the lemon will get spoilt someday and you can’t have that as well. The second superpower that you can develop is “learning to learn”. Keep learning every minute of the day. Learn how to learn things in an efficient way and put it to practice. You don’t need to delete your social media accounts to avoid seeing your successful friends, rather talk to them more often and learn about how they reached there and if you can take something out of the conversation and implement it in your life to make it better.
Learn to appreciate your loved ones and how much they care about you. I used to admire the smart, educated, independent, and hard-working women I meet at work, but I rarely appreciated my loving wife who works all day to make my day better. She may not be as educated and smart as those women, but she is giving her best every day to pull me out of depression and keep me happy. Such people need to be thanked and taken care of because all they want is to see you happy.
As an IT engineer, I used to consider myself very unfortunate that I couldn’t settle down abroad like people from my industry who are ten years older than me. With most countries making immigration processes stringent these days, I used to feel that I missed the boat and I can never get PR or citizenship of a developed country anymore. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk. That was a good time and those people grabbed that opportunity and made a fortune. Now that time is long gone. It can not come back. But new doors have opened!
Though the living conditions in India are still not great, the pace at which the IT industry has grown in India is astonishing. Good software devs are making a ton of money in Bangalore, so much that the bad living conditions don’t affect them much. Bad roads and traffic? Work from home or travel to the office at non-peak hours. Air and water pollution? Use air conditioners and water purifiers. Use a car to travel to the office. There is a solution to every old Indian problem if you have the money to buy it. This is the information age and every great company is switching to the global delivery model and setting up offices in India, and luckily I am in the same industry. I have not missed the boat, but I am working hard to board the next big boat! The moment is now, and its always now or never. Either you tap on opportunities or let them go and regret later.
I might blame social media because people just post happy moments there. It’s an incorrect and skewed virtual representation of the real world. It would be great to limit the use of social media to a few minutes a day just to stay updated. You should try to make more friends and meet new people in the real world. And that way you would realize that life is not all rosy for everyone, and even the boy who has a sea-facing apartment in Mumbai also struggles with something or the other every day.
