Recently, I wrote about FOMO – Fear of Missing out (1) and how we end up doing everything (often too much) because we don’t want to feel like we have missed something. My husband recently introduced me to the concept of JOMO – Joy of Missing out and I felt my body breathe a deep sigh.
These terms have been solidified by the social media world. With FOMO people are constantly posting on social media, liking, commenting. Whereas with JOMO, they find bliss taking a break or cutting off from social media to enjoy the real world.
It also applies to anything we undertake, so accepting or declining invitations in the real world. There is always another side to everything.
Tomorrow night, I’m off to my friend’s Ben Franklin Circle where we discuss virtues. A pattern has emerged that anything taken to an extreme may become detrimental. For example, order, if you are too orderly, you may be compulsive which has its downsides. Whereas if you are too lax, then chaos is upon your life.
When I looked up FOMO and JOMO, I found NEMO (1) – Nearly but not fully Missing Out. This seems to be the middle ground between the two, where you are still on social media but not excessively, doing what feels right for you only.
If you tend towards the extremes of FOMO or JOMO, perhaps it is time to find NEMO in your social media and everyday life.
Footnotes
2) Not the clown fish 🙂 but had to put in a small reference for silliness sake.