“What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have, it is what he or she is afraid of losing.”
–Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin In The Game
Everyone knows F.O.M.O. But how about its insidious neighbor F.O.L.A.?
The Fear Of Missing Out is so commonly referred to now, I have even heard it used in conversation as “fomo.” In today’s catch phrase world, the term has jumped the shark. It’s now one spot above carpe diem, and just below it is what it is.
People even use this as a basis on which to live their lives, or at least they purport to do so, everywhere on their whitewashed perfect social media profiles.
But FOMO doesn’t rule the world. FOLA does.
The Fear of Losing Anything. Anything at all.
And that’s where most of our lives stagger to a stop.
The benefits of mass communication are countless. Our lives, once so private, are now the subject of anyone with Wi-Fi and access to Google or Facebook. This is great if you need advice on how to change a sparkplug or find the post office or get the best deal on car insurance. It is great if you want to keep in touch with a ton of people, while not having to actually engage with them if you do not wish it. And that is just scratching the surface.
The unforeseen downside, though, is that we get a view of the race we have been in since birth. Everyone in the world is pursuing the same golden ring. That ring may be actual gold—money. It may be fame. It may be popularity. But society sets us up from the start to compete with each other for limited resources, a grand socio-economic version of evolution.
The race has been going on for millennia, but for most of the history of mankind, it was possible to delude yourself that you weren’t so bad off. After all, you would reason, back in the age of beepers and CDs, only a few can sit at the top. There is plenty of room for the moderately successful to reside behind them, and your ego could take that hit, certain that you were at least in the next rung or two, in sight of the Joneses.
But now the Internet has opened your eyes. Now you see how far behind you are. Your failures are reflected in their successes, displayed for all to see.
And that is a hit your ego can NOT take. Now you think, it’s possible you’re not even average, much less moderately well off. Perhaps you are even falling behind.
You clutch at what little you have. Your job you’re afraid of leaving. The car you keep milking for a few more miles because you don’t think you can afford a new car payment. That naggy negative girlfriend or the lying, cheating husband.
These things suck—but if you didn’t have them, where would you be? Loserville.
What stands out to me about Taleb’s poignant quote above is not so much his moving the goal posts of life from our goals to our needs, but that he doesn’t state what we’re afraid to lose. The suggestion is that there is a finite and limited number of such items. That we actually have something we are willing to lose.
I would argue otherwise. We are now so tied into advancing in the game of life that the loss of anything at all is a detriment to our self-confidence. We can’t afford to lose even the smallest positive element of our lives, or so we think. If our friend drives a better car than we do, we think we have failed. If we don’t get married before all of our college buddies, we self-perceive ourselves to have failed to “grow up” as quickly as they did. If we don’t make as much money as someone else… well, you get it by now.
F.O.L.A. infests our dreams and destroys them. We won’t take chances anymore. We stay in our comfort zones. We do not try to improve, to be better people.
And the ultimate irony is all of these perfect lives on display in our Insta-feed are lies. Everyone is losing the race. But no one is willing to admit it.