I Moved to The Forest to Chase FOMO Away
Choosing a life of less puts an end to always wanting more.
I was on a run earlier, and I did something so typical for me. I really wanted to listen to some upbeat music, but also to a podcast about writing. Unable to decide, torn between the benefits of both, I literally went from one to the other, pressing play on each of them, in turn, every thirty seconds for a few minutes.
Then, over all of that, I heard the birds singing.
I was in a beautiful place, on a quiet footpath by a river, surrounded by trees. The only sounds were the birds and ducks skimming across the surface of the water.
I took my phone, and turned off both my podcast and my playlist, and just listened to the world around me instead.
And you know what? I didn’t miss either.
I have always had terrible FOMO — meaning, fear of missing out. The term is often used to designate that feeling of dissatisfaction and insufficiency we get when we see other people’s lives on social media, and while that is definitely a contributing factor, my FOMO is of a more general kind. I can never leave a party before the end, just in case something crazy happens just after I’ve gone. For my entire first year of college, I slept about four hours a night because I didn’t want to miss a single opportunity…
