JOMO
This post was written by my son, Weston Johnson. If you’d like to be a guest writer, I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say! Please send me your thoughts at insideoutyoga@va.metrocast.net.
As a white yuppie, I often enjoy reading NPR news—a passion that I suspect is shared by many of this illustrious blog's gentle readers. I recently happened upon quite a good article about a journalist's visit to a Buddhist monastery in New Jersey. The small number of monks and nuns who live in this monastery follow a very strict set of rules: no cosmetics or jewelry, rise before dawn, no eating after noon, sandals and robe only, and no cooking or shopping—they must rely on alms for their food. When asked if they missed luxuries such as cell phones, vacations, entertainment, etc, one monk joked about JOMO: the Joy of Missing Out.
Many of you fine readers will recognize this as a play on FOMO: the Fear of Missing Out. This concept is the equally ugly stepsister of Keeping Up with The Joneses. I could easily, easily, dear readers, wax grandiloquent about the various evils for which these sinister and corrupt cultural mass-neuroses are to blame, but I will spare you all and rant about them to my wife later instead.
My friends are seeing the new movie. My sister got a new blazer. My college friends are all on six-month paid sabbaticals in Bali. My yoga teacher just bought her fourth vacation house. You get it— there's always something shiny and fun going on in other people's lives. How are some people always able to have such amazing experiences? Maybe they're better at managing their time. Maybe they're more successful. Maybe you suck compared to them.
But is the grass really that much greener? One really cool thing about yoga is its emphasis on being present in the moment, something it shares with Buddhist philosophy. Your mind becomes flexible along with your body because it's trained to observe itself along with everything else and is no longer as reactive to negative emotions like fear and envy. Or rather, it is reactive to negative emotions, but now you notice that it is, and are more capable of letting those negative feelings pass. And that's really all FOMO is: a lizard-brained automatic reaction to missing out on something fun, something that could benefit you by giving you a good story and raising your social status with your fellow primates by some infinitesimal fraction.
Why not try JOMO instead? Next time you hear about your friends' all-expenses-paid-including-drinks trip to the Four Seasons in the French Riviera (and they're ALL going—everyone was invited except you), simply take a moment. Pause, and reflect on where and who you are. There is a simple joy to be found in being you right now, whoever you are, if you take a moment to find it.