FOMO probably has its roots somewhere in a forest.
Imagine a group of early humans standing around when suddenly everyone starts running. You look around. Nobody explains anything.
You have two options: run with them, or stay where you are and discover whether they were escaping a tiger.
Evolution probably decided this was a terrible moment for individualism. So it gave us FOMO: “You are missing something. Move.”
It was a useful survival mechanism. The tiger was real. The danger was real. The consequences of missing the group could be real.
Thousands of years later, the tiger is gone. The mechanism remains. And now it has Wi-Fi.
FOMO at work is very sophisticated. Someone gets invited to a meeting you weren’t invited to, and suddenly you need to know what happened. You didn’t want the meeting. You didn’t even know the meeting existed. But now three people have discussed something without you and apparently your career is in danger.
FOMO on weekends is equally rational. You planned to stay home, drink coffee and do absolutely nothing. Then you see someone having brunch in beautiful sunlight. Suddenly your peaceful Saturday feels like a failed life choice.
Social media took FOMO and gave it industrial-scale distribution. You can now discover that someone is travelling, getting promoted, buying a house, running a marathon, falling in love, launching a company and making sourdough. All without leaving the sofa.
FOMO becomes particularly creative when you start a parallel business. Someone launches a newsletter. You should have started one. Someone creates a course. Perhaps you should create a course. Someone builds an app. Maybe the app is your calling.
Someone changes their LinkedIn headline.
You panic.
Meanwhile, you have spent three hours choosing a font.
And then there is parenting.
Your child is happily playing with a cardboard box.You see another child doing ballet, swimming, Dutch, chess and something called “creative STEM exploration.”
You look at your child.
Your child looks at the cardboard box.
You think: “Are we failing?”
The child continues playing with the cardboard box.
The cardboard box is winning.
Perhaps that is the strange thing about FOMO. The brain was designed to keep us from missing the tiger. Somehow, we taught it to worry about missing brunch, meetings, business ideas and Dutch lessons.
But perhaps FOMO is asking us to solve an impossible problem: how to live every life we could have lived.
We can’t.
Every choice quietly closes a thousand doors. Every life contains roads we will never take, places we will never see, people we will never become, and versions of ourselves that will remain imaginary.
That isn’t the tragedy of being alive.
It is the price of becoming someone.
Perhaps peace begins when we stop asking, “What am I missing?”
And start asking, “What am I here for?”
~ Megha.
Author @ myhandwrites