NO FOMO

Remember when you were younger and you would sit in front of your television and watch whatever would come on. You didn't care if it was mid season or mid episode, if it was on and you liked it you would watch it. Sometimes you would make a an effort to watch something according to it's schedule but you really weren't ruled by it. If you were a kid you watched cartoons on Saturday or after school, if you were an adult you watched the news or an old movie in the evening. It was pretty cut and dry. As society got older, the options seemed to grow along with us. Now in the year 2014, if we a kid wants to watch cartoons they have numerous choices to pick from or Netflix. The same applies to adults with television shows. Now that we live in the instantly accessible generation, nothing really seems to be worth waiting for, many forms of media makes one feel like they need to immediately embrace or else it will "go bad". But the "going bad" in this scenario isn't rotting and growing mold, it's the fear of something loosing it's social relevance.   "There's a new show! Catch it now so you can be included in conversations and thus be included in the populous." This wonderful anxiety has bled over onto social networking sites, where you can see that so many things are going on simultaneously. Watching invite after invite appear and either they conflict with other plans or you just can't go for one reason or another. It causes an anxiety that you're not fulfilling social obligations.   Does this sound irrational? Well it's not, it's become such an issue in the internet age that it's been coined as F.O.M.O. or the fear of missing out. Prior to the days of Facebook, discovering things felt organic and people took their own time with it. Now it's as though we're bombarded with choices on a constant basis, or peer's experiences which we constantly hold ourselves to.  "Jim went to the Snowbar. Well I don't want to miss out, I better go too." I felt myself playing a constant game of catch up to be socially relevant with coworkers and peers and eventually I broke down and didn't care any more. It's difficult when I'm empathetic towards everyone's tastes and I can relate towards why someone likes something. I, at one point, found myself feeling like I had to almost study for an exam to have social interaction. What's the current "thing" and learn as much about it as possible so I can discuss said "thing" with peers. FOMO along with a strange quirk that I possess, which prevents me from holding long from social interaction unless there's some shared obsession, has been a recipe for some severe anxiety. Maybe it's my meditation, but I'm finally getting back that joyous place prior to Facebook. That joyous time when I would respect what other people liked but I would still dance to the beat of my own drum.  I've learned that you have to define yourself by your likes, not the likes of others. The hardest thing is to stand your ground and actually defend what you like. If someone doesn't like something that you like, then respect their opinion but realize that it's just that, an opinion. This world is a tapestry of conflicting and opposing opinions, and our differences are what make us beautiful. We should celebrate them instead of fighting them, fighting our differences is what creates prejudice.  I had to tell myself:

 liberate yourself from fear and realize that you are not missing out.