Tag: FOMO

Quick Fix, Not

Here is a basic dichotomy these days.

We are inventing fools. Interpret that however you like.

Forget the industrial revolution and the upheaval it brought.

The technological revolution is on a whole other level.

There are so many new and improved appliances, processes, gadgets, vehicles out there for us. They are supposed to make our lives “easier.” And “better.” And “happier.” And more “personally satisfied.”

You feeling all that, yet? I know I’m not.

I laugh now at the early promises of “new technology.” We were all sold on how these new abilities were going to make our lives easier. The four-day work week. Paperless offices. More time for “leisure” and “creativity.” I snort in my coffee.

That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

So here we are awash in the daily frustrations and idiocy as a product of countless “technological solutions.” I’ve talked about this before.

What I’m experiencing later in life is the huge social deficit caused by diminishing face-to-face interactions. Like connection. Like getting to know each other. Like shared experience. Isn’t that quaint?

It has left us vulnerable to all manner of snake-oil salesmen. Because if we don’t know anyone well, and don’t have access to information about their track record and have never met their parents or siblings, anyone will do in a pinch. Right? We need to believe.

Ideas about belonging to a community of like-minded individuals who know and support each other seem quaint and pedantic now. We imagine, crave and seek out a community of similar seekers who might be out there for us to connect with. At this particular time, it is harder to do than it was in the past.

So what do we do instead? We join online groups. We have countless ZOOM calls. We sign up for Facebook groups with people who have causes or interests that we also believe in or care about. We “lol” and “ffs” and “FOMO” ourselves into low-grade stupefication.

No wonder FOMO is so prevalent. People are so disconnected from the ebb and flow of life and each other that the manic chase to “keep up” is reaching epidemic proportions. Young people no longer have a shared social history that taught them how to be part of a group or community.

I believe many believe the internet is the way, the truth and the life. What will happen to them if it ever fails them?

The anonymity of the internet nourishes all kinds of negatives: bullying, sexting, false information, false scenarios and facts. Oops sorry. I didn’t mean to post that. Oops sorry. I have no way to retrieve that post and obliterate it from the internet.

No problem. Instead of overcoming their shame or finding ways to deal with their pain, young people injure or kill themselves. Is that surprising?

What stupefies me is the tolerance we all exhibit in light of widespread social and psychological deterioration. Rigid, conservative, prejudicial attitudes and actions have always been with us. That needed shaking up. But the parameters of human civility and interaction were tighter then.

People once seemed to understand that humans had a limit to their capacity for enduring pain. They had enough sense of belonging that they understood their actions were a vital part of the collective whole.

How does that tee up with how you are experiencing life these days? Safe and happy with a community of people you know you can count on and who know you and support you and love you anyway? No wonder the internet and Facebook and who knows what else are awash in corrective “positive affirmations” and meaty memes that promise to guide us to the “meaning of life.”

Our heads are in such a constant twist scrambling after the next “big thing” in guidance and insight, we have collective whiplash.

My heart aches for young people today. Young people desperate for individuality and attention and belonging dye their hair fuschia, wear three inch fingernails and one inch eyelashes. They tattoo meaningful Chinese characters on their arsm.

For those for whom this is not enough, they simply pick up an AK-47 with their allowance money at the shop around the corner and go out and murder a bunch of people. That we have collectively managed to breed such troubled, alienated souls reflects our failure to inculcate the fundamental “rules” of becoming a human being in our children: with all the warts those rules contained.

I believe a majority are scrambling to make sense of life today and need to understand where we fit in it. I watch my adult children struggling to internalize the reality of out of control housing prices. Once a surefire road to financial security, more and more that is reserved for fewer and fewer. It has affected their future and family planning and stability.

Who wants to start a revolution?

Time and Place

There was something I did not know when I was young but know very well now. In our lives and usually beyond our bidding, there is a time and place for everything. Finding out what works for you in whatever time and place you are in at the moment is the challenge. 

There are distinct phases in our lives but they don’t present as some kind of script to follow. Something about the zeitgeist shifts around us as we come up to and pass certain milestones. High school graduation, as an example.

In the weeks and months leading up to that event, there is much activity and preparation. Not only for the exams and essays required to get you past the graduation finish line but much thought and preparation has been invested into what you will do afterward.

Take the summer off or work to earn some coin in the local supermarket? Take a whole gap year and travel the world before you settle into full-time studies or an entry-level position in the career of your choosing? Or spend your time sowing some wild oats and grabbing what little is left of childhood freedoms before the responsibilities of adulthood kick in?

I remember the subtle but significant pressures that kicked in at various stages and with every passing year when I was young. Family members can say tons without saying anything much of anything at all. “So, how’s your love life?” the jovial uncle might ask when you are obviously still very much single.

“I hope your parents live long enough to become grandparents,” the jovial uncle’s wife – my aunt by marriage – chimes in with a chuckle and the mildest hint of a harumph. 

I felt a subtle shift and FOMO (“fear of missing out”) kick in when my younger sisters had children and I had none. Let me emphasize here that FOMO is an extraordinarily stupid reason for choosing a mate and having children. I believe many do it though, but call it something else.

Shortly after my marriage imploded, I opined that I had put more thought into choosing carpet colors than choosing my children’s father. In my defense, I didn’t know then what I know now. But damn. Take about hasty and flakey decision-making. At that time, generally, I was paying more attention to others’ expressed needs and wishes than I was to my own.

Life set out to teach me fundamental lessons after that which, up until that point, I had blithely ignored. More telling, I believed certain expectations didn’t apply to me. I mentioned before the messages we got as children about being “special.” The rules that applied to mere mortals didn’t apply to me. Hubris is an ugly and limiting affliction.

I got schooled. Big time. I didn’t understand what this strange yearning was that in the weeks leading up to delivery that made me want to create a safe and orderly home for my infant child. And so I learned about nesting. 

So while I went through most of the so-called normal benchmarks of adult life, it was never on a path I felt that I was choosing freely. That’s a great form of denial and I was pretty good at that. 

I had missed out on the steady guidance of healthy female role models I assume other women had. My mother abdicated her role as a mother early in my existence and struck up a close relationship with pills of her choosing. 

Other potential role female models in my life died too soon or otherwise faded from my life. In any case, when it came to the finer points of parenting, and specifically mothering, I was woefully unprepared.

I do not recommend entering parenting without some sort of stable and viable support system. Independence is great but its allure tanks dramatically when a helpless human being needs you 24/7. I believe people couple up as much for someone else to cover diaper duty as for the deep emotional and social satisfaction of having a life partner. 

In a similar way, subtle hints come along in life’s journey to move you forward. Time to go for that promotion or look for another job. Time to move house or even move out of your community. Time to move on from any unsatisfactory situation, whether personal or professional. A wake-up call behooves you to focus on your health and well-being above all other considerations. If we aren’t here on the planet, or struggling to physically make it through our daily lives, all other considerations are moot. 

By a certain age, we start to look back and see how our own lives were shaped by variations on all of these themes. Choices we did and didn’t make. Opportunities we did or didn’t accept. I once read that we all must make most important life decisions with insufficient data and limited foresight. And sometimes we deliberately choose to abandon reason, flout the rules, and go with our gut.

A favorite saying of mine is about second (or third or fourth) marriages. They have been described as “a triumph of hope over experience.” There are certain variables that even the most carefully laid out life trajectory can flout: love and longing and desire. The heart wants what it wants.

If the allure of “the road less traveled” appeals to you on some deep level, you may understand what I’m talking about. Or if, in fact, you have taken an alternate path in your own life, you understand what that means in your very bones. And you may be happier than many.

Whatever the outcome, choosing to live life at your own speed and at your own pace may land you in a place of your own making. That can make a significant difference in how you see your life looking backward. And forward, too, if you are brave enough to follow that path.

There is no time limit on courage regardless of the time and place you are in at the moment.

Ain’t It Awful?

There is a personal payoff in being a little withdrawn and isolated from the world occasionally. Many people spend a lot of time observing the world and listening to the news and hearing politicians expertly and bloodlessly dissect their opponents. Those people, understandably, often have a very dim worldview.

A common complaint I hear about the state of the world is that it is awful and they can’t do anything about it. For the most part, they are correct. But what most people don’t get is that what happens out there in those other theaters of life isn’t of much importance or relevance to their own daily lives.

Yes, of course, the decisions of politicians and policies and laws that are enacted affect our pocketbook and standard of living. They may decide what we can and cannot do or where we can and cannot go. As for our regular daily lives, they are simply so much noise. It is our choice whether to listen to that noise or not.

I feel sorry for young people today who are held sway by the endless pageantry of new developments in technology and the Internet. There is this influencer who must be followed and then that one and have you seen whats-her-names newest trend-setting video but he’s all the rage now and she no longer counts. How in hell do they keep it all straight in their heads. Maybe they don’t.

Unplugging from technology seems analogous to committing social suicide these days. It is particularly sad that young people – teenagers say – who are at the very point of trying to discover who they are and what they want to be in life, have to dig through, filter out and mirror their life choices against the preaching of dozens of online personalities. Strangers in point of fact.

I am not as vulnerable to this information overload as I once was but I cannot say I am not influenced. Some websites and video reels catch me and have an uncanny power to eat up a half hour or more of my time before I am even conscious of it. There are several excellent writers out there who have my attention and I feel I can barely keep up with their output.

The chief culprits in my life presently are Facebook video cooking reels. A revolving cast of chefs from all sorts of genres display feats of culinary prowess that I would give anything to replicate. The videos are almost choreographed ballets as much as they are recipe-sharing. Happily, I am old enough to realize, that while they are dazzling, I am not inclined to beat myself up if I cannot recreate their splendid creations in my own kitchen.

I take that analogy and apply its potential to more impressionable and searching young people. I can only imagine that they must suffer for not always having the “right” clothes, or the most up-to-date cellphone, and maybe spontaneous weekend trips to anywhere but here. It is kinda diabolical.

As old as I am and with the resources I can draw on, some of these come-ons attract me. I don’t act on them and I don’t suffer for not acting on them. But if I were younger, I might feel left out.

I was at first bemused by and then a little sad to learn there is an actual thing out there called FOMO – “fear of missing out.” It seems to be there is so much technological space litter available out there that you can’t help but be missing out on something.

It is like some kind of fiendish device that is deliberately designed to keep us all “off-balance.” It seems to force people to rely exclusively on “significant” “others” “outside” themselves to find joy and happiness. They even seem to rely on them to tell them who they are. That is the biggest fraud of all. And a dangerous one if you are particularly fragile or vulnerable.

My version of “Give Peace A Chance” is unplugging from time to time. I rarely watch the news on television anymore. It is an irritation to the spirit and has an eerily similar sameness with its litany of tragedy, and skulduggery, and focuses on the worst of what humans are and do.

Books give me greater comfort. I can pick and choose among them for lessons I want to learn and master and access the emotional experiences I want to have. That is why popular successful authors are so popular. They are reliable and predictable in their style and output. Sure seems to me that in a world that is most kindly described as a little topsy-turvy, I’ll take a circuitous John Grisham novel bashing the legal system over CNN and Youtube anytime.

It keeps a rein on my sanity and a paddock for my well-being.