Move aside FOMO, JOMO is here to stay!

Fear of missing out, popularly known as FOMO, is a fairly recent term related to the ever-pervasive social media. The term is most frequently associated with a negative emotion. In contrast, the more recent term JOMO or joy of missing out can be considered as an updated version of “Ignorance is bliss”.

To live in constant fear of something better transpiring elsewhere, or relish the present moment, that is the question.

A little context – I love watching live sports. Naturally, I savoured the recently concluded Olympics as much as I could. While watching though, I realized something – although one is spoilt for choice, one is also always wondering what is happening in the other arenas.

It is practically impossible to keep up with everything that is going on around us. Especially in this age of information overload, it is not surprising that we skip over on a lot of stuff.

Is it then, not wise to choose what to miss out on? And if one has the opportunity to make a choice, why take it and be miserable? One can happily decide what to miss out on. Even if the decision is to miss out on everything else, it is as someone once said, “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

I look at JOMO from a flipped perspective. JOMO is not so much about the joy of missing out on something else, somewhere else, as it is about the joy of just being in the present and making peace with it. Perhaps with a little practice, knowing very well that there may be something better elsewhere and choosing to ignore it, brings with it a great thrill.

Selective ignorance is bliss, I’d say.