Fear of Missing Out [FOMO]

Nowadays, almost all of us are suffering from a new age disease we call FOMO or Fear Of Missing Out. We have FOMO of social media, parties, and so many other things. It is strange to see our own behavior that every few minutes our hand is on our mobile to see WhatsApp messages or e-mails as even organizations have started expecting a response from employees the moment messages are put on the group. The gold standard of responses is slowly shifting to minutes or even real-time. The expectations are rising among kids' peers also and I see kids coming under tremendous peer pressure to respond to their WhatsApp messages on the group quickly.

Overall, we are moving towards a culture of FOMO where at the back of our minds, we always have a fear of missing out on something. We are so afraid of missing something that we even do not want to examine what we are going to miss. All of us are quite hardwired to have a FOMO about the body and that is why we all have a very robust mechanism of "pain". I was reading the book "Pain" written by Abdul-Ghaaliq Lakkhen who is a member of the faculty of Pain Medicine affiliated with the Royal College of Anesthetics and a visiting professor at Manchester Metropolitan University. The following lines made me think a lot:

"Regardless of how much or how little information is transmitted, the information that does get through will be perceived and interpreted through the unique expectations, beliefs, mood, and previous experience of an individual. I therefore urge the medical students to always attempt to manage the expectations of the patient with regards to the degree of pain relief that an analgesic will facilitate."

Thus it appears that even the feeling of pain also varies across individuals. It appears that if something is wrong in some part of the body, the brain starts feeling FOMO of the pleasant sensations comes under stress, and starts reacting erratically. That's why some people feel pain more. The author says at some other place in the book:

"Depression and anxiety play a role in the experience and report of pain. Catastrophizing is a psychological construct that consists of excessive rumination, magnification, and helplessness in the face of adversity and involves extreme negative thoughts about one's plight. A higher level of catastrophizing, and consequently feeling a lower sense of control, is an important predictor that a patient will experience severe acute pain or develop chronic pain when pain persists beyond what would be medically expected."

It appears to me that certain traumas or negative experiences at any stage in life have a major impact on us. If we do not take care of the inner hollowness and center our existence around some person, money, power, or some mental idea, and such person, thing, or idea is traumatically hurt, then that inner hollowness surfaces in the form of depression and anxiety. It was as if we anchored our boat to a large ship and that ship has sunk now, and we have nothing to look forward to or very little to look forward to. We get so obsessed with that little which is left and any small deviation in that results in FOMO. After the loss of a child, parents may develop a fear of losing the other child and their panic reaction may trigger quite sooner. Similarly, if we have passed through a major illness, we may give attention to almost every sensation in the body because of the FOMO any indications of another disease. 

Of course, the body is the first and the foremost anchor. But we get anchored to our families and therefore have FOMO family members and their company. That is why we look forward to reaching homes keenly after the office. School kids look forward to meeting their parents. We look forward to meeting our friends. We meet all these people since they make us feel safe. The inner hollowness keeps looking for different anchors and mostly family members, friends, and society in general also act like the ships we tie our small boats. That is why we often have FOMO them and therefore do not want to miss any social gathering, even at the cost of painful traveling and the opportunity cost of the time spent on such events.

We also get anchored to our material possessions, as a result of the inner hollowness. We get anchored to them such as money, power, and positions, and slowly develop the FOMO of these things. Having invested in the stock market, we keep a close eye on the stock market and any large-scale fluctuations in the sense are enough to take our sleep away. The same happens with positions and people start looking for astrologers and Tantriks to retain their positions and to get better positions. The more support we get in the external world to forget the inner hollowness the more insecure we become. The inner hollowness keeps rising and that is the reason that FOMO the things that we have anchored to also grows stronger.

In the process, some more intelligent people (or greater fools) eye for knowledge and skills to feel secure. They start anchoring on the information, knowledge, and skills that are not dependent on people, positions, or organizations. They invest heavily in their self-images and these PPT people try to project everything including how knowledgeable they are. They feel that this self-image of being knowledgeable and intelligent will take care of their inner hollowness. However, the nature does not work that way. The more we rely on external anchoring, the hollowed we become from the inside. As a result, these people become slowly arrogant, adamant, and quite restless. Sometimes this is reflected in their behavior and sometimes they are intelligent enough to brush it under the carpet but everybody around can feel the heat.

Meditation is essentially a journey into the inner world. We can't see our inner hollowness unless we look inside. However, the journey inside is not possible until we get rid of these anchors. The greater the inner hollowness the more tightly we hold on to these anchors. It's like the alcohol addiction. The more someone is addicted the more acute are the withdrawal symptoms. If one lakes liquor again, the withdrawal symptoms will be stronger. When we sit in meditation, we drop the external objects for some time like the television, mobile, and other things. Then we slowly start dropping different thoughts out of the mind. It's not so that thoughts do not come to our minds. They come but we do not attend to them. Then we observe sensations in different parts of our bodies and start dropping them. Sensations are the result of our external anchoring. If the anchor is safe, we have pleasant sensations, else unpleasant. We observe both types of sensations and understand their nature of changing fast and moving on. When we drop all the external anchors by witnessing the sensations in different parts of the body with equanimity and without any reaction, we slowly start understanding reality and our true nature. That makes us complete inside and we get rid of the FOMO of any and every external anchor.