musingswhileunlearning

Credits: musingswhileunlearning.com Acceptance, that all is as it should be, while diligently staying the course and following your inner guidance is the recipe for eternal happiness and well-being. Sometimes, it is as simple as that. It is what it is. In fact, it has always been like that but when circumstances are in our favour, who cares. No one wants to hear it when things are not too great either. We want what we want and when we want it. We are ready to put in the work. In fact, we have put in a lot of work so when we do not see results the way we expect them, we get frustrated. Worse, if someone less worthy (in our eyes) gets a lot of success, with what we see as mediocre work, we go through phases of anger and self-pity, anxiety and depression depending on many factors. But, it is what it is! It does not matter whether you disagree; whether you clench your fists and scream "unfair"- it is what it is! So, what now? Do we give up? No. We just accept things as they are....

  For an acronym such as this to come into existence, the fear must be so real and that is sad! FEAR OF MISSING OUT aka FOMO is common parlance these days. In 48 years of my life which is a substantial period of time, I believe, it is only in the last five years at most that this term has caught my attention. It was, in fact, coined in 2004 and got included in the Oxford Dictionary in 2010 (clearly letting me know that I am lagging way behind to have any fear of missing out). For those very few people, my age or older who are still unaware of the term, FOMO came into being, on and because of, social media, to describe or define the anxiety caused by the perception of missing out on fun and all things pleasurable, that others were seen to enjoy. The other aspect of the same is the addiction to keep checking in despite feelings of depression, negative thinking and low self-esteem that it may cause. The underlying issue is Comparison. Now, comparison has always existed and unfortuna...