A pair weeks ago I used to be purported to go to Comic-Con International, the premier U.S. convention for all the pieces popular culture. I actually have been going nearly every 12 months for the last 15 years, and I look ahead to it each time I’m going. For me it’s a very fun, positive experience.
Then, two days before I used to be purported to leave, I got really sick and I needed to cancel. And the strangest thing happened: I felt relieved.
Now, possibly a few of that was an instinctive response to creating the fitting decision. But I actually have felt the identical way at other, similar moments, like when a friend has to reschedule a lunch or dinner, or when a flight gets canceled. It’s as if suddenly I actually have been given an unexpected gift. Out of nowhere my life has more room in it.
Sometimes not attending to do the thing that you simply want can actually feel sort of wonderful, even luxurious.
For a while now people have talked about FOMO, the fear of missing out, and the way it could drive our decisions, sometimes in nonsensical ways. Did I actually need to see Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl” before she left? Based on the reviews, definitely not. (Sorry, Beanie.) But then if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t know what everyone has been talking about. Excuse me, but huh?
I’m wondering if there may be one other dynamic deep inside us that we will not be aware of: the Joy of Missing Out. Sometimes not attending to do the thing that you simply want or that you think that you would like can actually feel sort of wonderful, even luxurious.
It shouldn’t make sense. Missing out is frustrating. But possibly it’s like this: When our hands are full, there is actually no likelihood for us to be given the rest. Once we lose out on something, even something genuinely great, suddenly our hands are free to receive other things. Put one other way, there may be room inside us for brand new possibilities.
Don’t get me unsuitable, I’m not saying, “Wouldn’t or not it’s great if none of us got to do the things we’ve been hoping to do?” And this is just not a sneaky try to draw you into my misery, either. It’s more like recognizing the glory that could be a snow day, not only for teenagers but for adults.
Once we lose out on something, even something genuinely great, suddenly our hands are free to receive other things.
I believe there’s many alternative varieties of JOMO, too. At Comic-Con Kevin Feige, the genius behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe, released an inventory of all the brand new Marvel movies and TV shows coming in the subsequent few years. Amongst them were some pretty exciting stories, just like the sequel to “Black Panther” and the Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel movie.
Still, the list, I felt like I had been signed up for a graduate seminar without my permission and now I had all these items I used to be going to must read.
TV watching today might be similar. A part of the issue of there being so many channels and shows to select from is that you simply find yourself feeling like you’re all the time behind. Our poetry editor Joe Hooverwrote an amazing article about this phenomenon a pair months ago. “I believe I actually have an indication permanently affixed to my shoulder blades: Tell me shows to look at,”he wrote.
But guess what? We don’t must make amends for any of those shows. We don’t have to seek out out if Mando and Baby Yoda manage to liberate Mandalore, or learn whether Meredith Grey ever leaves Seattle, or take heed to another word about “Succession.” (Thanks, Jesus.) We don’t have to look at the subsequent Marvel movie when it comes out, or ever. If we give ourselves permission to “miss out” on a few of these items, even just temporarily, we may find we don’t even miss them. Is it me, or does that possibility feel sort of delightful?
We will only discover the delight and relief that’s waiting for us by selecting to miss out on something that was great.
It’s the identical for a whole lot of individuals with social media. We is likely to be on a platform to keep up a correspondence with friends, to boost our own profile or possibly just out of a way of that anxiety that we don’t miss anything. If the Chicago White Sox win the World Series and I’m not on Twitter to see the “Na na na na, Na na na na, Hey hey hey, Goodbye” tweets from other fans, am I still an element of that moment?
But then what number of studies have we seen about how great people feel once they leave social media or do a social media fast? Charlie Warzel at The Atlantic writes rather a lot in regards to the relationship between the web and human flourishing.In a recent interview along with his colleague Kate Lindsay, who was talking about how often social media is conveying news of varied crises, Warzel mused, “It’s tough to live in a spot that’s all the time in a state of emergency.” We don’t wish to bury our heads within the sand, but we don’t have to be confronted about all of it immediately or at every moment, either.
We hear rather a lot today about burnout. And a few of that could be a function of the sum of money we want to live today and the work that’s being asked of us. But sometimes we also put ourselves on a hamster wheel of expectations and fear—if I say no to this, they might never invite me to do anything again—and before you understand it we have now built a jail for ourselves.
I don’t mean to imply that walking away from things is straightforward. Missing out takes courage. We will only discover the delight and relief that’s waiting for us by selecting to miss out on something that was great. It’s a spiritual discipline, really, the unusual practice of the leap of religion. Perhaps it helps us to be more ready for the larger, existential leaps that sometimes come our way. But more immediately possibly it gives us access in our on a regular basis lives to unexpected pockets of enjoyment. Truly, when a little bit of JOMO happens, it seems like you’ve gotten away with something, or uncovered a secret that nobody else knows.
You may miss out on things and still be joyful. Perhaps even happier.
