Fomo, Jomo, Wagmi And Why We Need Them in Our Lives : Delights of the Ordinary No. 15

It is the misfits who have made the bulbs and thought of gravity seeing a falling apple.

There were no secrets in the villages that lay along the bank of Pleasant River. There were hard-working people among the inhabitants, but life wore away so quietly and slowly that there was a good deal of spare time for conversation - under the trees at noon in the hayfield; hanging over the bridge at nightfall; seated about the stove in the village store of an evening.

- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggins

This week I have been trying to muster up some sanguinity to keep working on the things I care about (like Delights of the Ordinary) and not worry about the joblessness I am in! Hence, with this newsletter, I take a short break from the ‘navel-gazing self-pity’ and start re-shaping my thoughts with a mild portion of positive hooting.

My purpose in dropping Delights of the Ordinary in your virtual letterbox is to let words, poems and art weave inside you much-awaited expectations of many impossibilities turning into new possibilities. So, here is wishing and hoping for you, more than little tender delights amidst the madness we all are in.

That, when you would read this letter, cloistered in your bed, neatly tucked, when the stars are visible or may not be that visible if you know that pollution has engulfed your city, or when you read it amidst the ordinary everyday chaos, or sipping your milk tea, may then this letter create much abundant machoism and sunlit beauty in you.

Now, let’s manage some space to ponder.

Picture: Unsplash

The Great Era of Acronyms of Our Lives: Fomo, Jomo and Wagmi

The average person spends 147 minutes a day on social media. Because of this, we’re more aware than ever of how others are spending their time. Every party, vacation and even meal out seems to be documented for the world to see.

- Emily Laurence on Forbes Health

FOMO is Fear of Missing Out

FOMO joined our modern lexicon along with the advent of social media. Honestly, we all have been doom-scrolling incessant reels and Pinterest feeds and refreshed them inconsolably. Then discreetly sigh over what a lovely life is out there and we are missing out on every bit of it!

But Erin Vogel, Ph.D., a social psychologist and an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, says that the feeling of missing out has existed long before social media.

The fear of missing out essentially is the deep desire for “belonging” that influences our self-esteem and identity. Dr Erin Vogel says “When we feel as if we’re part of a community and others approve of us, we feel better about ourselves. When we don’t get that sense of community approval, we feel worse about ourselves.”

It turns out that my whole life is such a doomsday disaster; for heaven’s sake when men are cultivating Greek-god looks, ladies radiating in their glass-skin and money is buying commodities for happiness, you and I are clearly missing out so much!

JOMO is Joy of Missing Out

Now we need enough gutsiness to add another acronym to our social-media-charged lexicon. Still, Jomo eases my nerves, because it has the word ‘Joy’ in it.

Pitted against Fomo, Jomo can be a competitor of Fomo, yet it isn’t, because Jomo is essentially the place of solace. And we need to put in more effort to practice Jomo than Fomo!

Rushing towards the bedazzled swamp of our urbanized goals, we still can choose to live a Jomo-stylized life because it goes further than just picking another distraction to take us away from mindless scrolling. It’s a shift in our attitude that can be extraordinarily emphatic.

“JOMO is the satisfaction one feels in the current moment, with accompanying acceptance of what one doesn’t have in that moment… Life satisfaction increases with intentionality and actively choosing things one finds fulfilling.”

- Cathy Sullivan-Windt, PhD, psychologist and founder of the New Connections Counseling Center.

Also, surprisingly Jomo Kenyatta was the first president of Kenya. Interesting!

WAGMI is We Are Going to Make It

If you have thought of inner punishments like - Where is my life taking me? Have I hit the mid-life crisis? The world is huge than I thought! If my life and years are wasted? Then I nudge you to do a WAGMI dance with me - that we are going to make it to the end. People before us did, our parents did so will we.

Those who have not made it are those who never sailed the up tides and low tides. If you are in the midst of so many uncertainties just like me, then Wagmi hi-fi to you!

When our current jobs are unsatisfying, when the whole planet operates with injustice, and people stamp us with our weaknesses (which we are already blundering with) then we surely need ample Jomo and Wagmi and less Fomo in our lives. The trick is to keep rowing. Rowing continuously. Putting in the effort, being smart to see what works and what doesn’t, to learn and relearn and never underestimate the fruit of our labour.

Because you, me and us all want to follow trends and be in a herd of lost sheep yet we have also the Jomo and Wagmi spirit running as an undercurrent inside each of us, thus, we can privately coddle into star gazing, deep thinking, journaling, singing, dancing and what not. And still, work for our purposes and dreams. It is the misfits who have made the bulbs and thought of gravity seeing a falling apple. So let’s hold the Jomo and Wagmi spirit and make a lot of things in our minds and in our wills and then with our hands.

Now let’s get to some fun part -

To joy scroll: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards is the hilarious side of wildlife and “wonder at the wonderful wildlife we share this world with.” I guess animals don’t struggle with an identity crisis. A dog remains a dog and doesn’t act like a cat while a kangaroo doesn’t desire zebra stripes! And they are wonderfully lovely and ferocious as the need be.

To art-scroll: When you see art, how do you feel? It is always a good thing to gaze upon it and comprehend how it makes you feel. Art is a coloured poetry that tells us what’s in the artist’s head and he wants you to feel that. Just gaze upon it. This year Robert Zandvliet is a featured new artist at GRIMM. His paintings look like child’s play to me yet make me feel nostalgic.

To quote: Author and activist Helen Keller on the importance of doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way: 

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” 

To end: 

Morning Meditation by Rainer Maria Rilke 
Have patience with everything 
unresolved in your heart, 
and try to love the questions themselves 
as if they were locked rooms 
or books written in a very foreign language. 

Do not search for the answers, which 
could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. 
Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, 
without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
 

Until the next week keep kindling the good spirit in you.

Anugrah

Delights of the Ordinary

Delights of the Ordinary is a free publication. Yet it takes me many hours of effort to write and curate it. I may need lots of coffee to keep me going.

You can :)

If you stumbled on my publication then you can explore all my previous editions here.