OLD FEARS, MY FOMO
Thursday, October 14, 2021
Being alone isn’t difficult.
As an only child who learned not to fear being alone, it’s a different trepidation.
Being alone – or feeling isolated in a crowd isn’t fun, but it’s not to be feared.
I’ve often joked about older folks obsessing about their health, about health issues generally, and about their respective aches and pains. Hearing lots of that, as I do, it gets tedious, and I know I rudely tune it out …
In pursuit of information about better health, nutrition and aging-better, I’ve been coming around to a different viewpoint of what is the root of it all for so many – it’s not about ill-health or death nearly as much as it is about fear of loss of function, loss of independence, loss of freedom of movement and inherent in all of that, loss of freedom of choice.
Choice of where to live or how, choice of where to go and when; choice of what to do with our time without getting someone’s permission or help. That, I conclude, is the fear of helplessness and its spawn, hopelessness.
I fear the loss of time, loss of experience, and loss of opportunity.
I can explain it too in terms of fear of missing out on my grandchildren growing up, fear of missing out on learning about some next new thing …
FOMO (fear of missing out) is not a social-media byproduct; it’s fear of letting go, fear of being incapable of choice and/or the fear of not knowing what is going on around us.
That may appear to describe fear of death.
It isn’t that; it’s fear of missing out.
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