We are led to believe that value is being present. Be there. Show up. Attend. Reply. Engage. In a world of digital, social, and professional overtures, the same message is sent: if you’re not here, you’re behind.
It is out of this compulsion that a common anxiety was created: FOMO — the fear of missing out. However, in private and almost subversively, a different philosophy now exists: JOMO — the joy of missing out.
On the face of it, it suggests denial. How can absence be joyful? How can it be not attending, not scrolling, not participating, while gaining rather than losing? However, JOMO is not about rejection but rather intention. The conscious choice is to be wholly present rather than partially present.
JOMO critiques a key modern belief: that more experiences lead to a better life. We are in a cumulative age, not only of things, but also of time. Trips documented. Events posted. Milestones broadcast. Life is a check sheet of outward involvement.
And yet, meaning, is it not there in expansion but in reduction?
Ancient Stoics frequently wrote on the topic of control, namely, knowing what is contained in it. As the world becomes more and more noisome, the self is constrained. Time is finite. Attention is fragile. To say yes blindly is to dismember the mind. JOMO is taking back attention as a divine resource.
Something subtle changes when you refuse an invitation, when you do not do it because you are afraid but because you are clear. You sell the approval of the external world for the approval of the inner being. You are no longer asking, ‘What am I missing?’ But you now start asking, What am I choosing?
Something deep in that question is freedom.
The experience of being left behind reveals something that is more profound; it is that most things go on without us. The party will happen. The group chat will move on. The trend will evolve. And the world does not fall apart without us. It is embarrassing — we are not at the heart of all stories — and it is also a relief. We are allowed to step back.
JOMO is not isolation. It is not indifference. It is not a withdrawal from life. Instead, it is a realisation that presence has some limits. You cannot be fully involved in one thing at all unless you give up another. An evening at home can imply missing an event full of people. Lengthening the dialogue might involve disregarding notifications. Rest can imply decreasing productivity.
And yet there grows something in that silence.
And it is that, when you are not always looking about, you start living here. The flavour of tea can be distinguished. Silence is made to be comfortable rather than vacuous. A walk that is undocumented becomes contemplative and not acting.
JOMO also has an existential aspect to it. Life is characterised in humanity by limitation. We are not able to leave all of the potentials of our existence. Any decision leaves out an alternative. Devoting oneself to a single career choice is equivalent to wasting a career. When one is committed to one person, one is giving up a thousand and one other options. It is not a tragedy that this is structured.
Soren Kierkegaard was a philosopher who wrote about the anxiety of possibility, the dizziness of having unlimited choices. JOMO responds with acceptance to dizziness. You cannot have all lives. You can only live this one. Not to have excelled is not to have failed; it is the state of natural choice.
This acceptance is made difficult by social media. It is a perpetual highlight show of some other place — people driving, accomplishing, and partying. It is an illusion that life is going on in a more vivid place. JOMO simply dispels that falsehood.
To embrace JOMO is to believe in the fact that the exposure is not proportional to the fulfilment. Thrive on the assumption that intimacy is better than spectacle. That, with fewer commitments, may be deeper commitments.
Missing out is a brave thing to do.
It involves not being easy to compare. It involves accepting the pain of being in the dark, not being part of it, and not being the centre of it. It declares that you should not judge life in terms of how much you ought to be engaged but rather in terms of the quality of awareness.
Ultimately, JOMO is not that which you avoid. It is something that you defend — your tranquillity, your duration, your inner harmoniousness.
When you put the laptop away, rather than scrolling; when you keep house, rather than going to work because you have to; when you decide to sleep instead of winning an award, you are saving your life. You are shaping it.
The joy is subtle. It is not noticeable in a loud way. It is present in the serenity that comes after a conscious ‘no’. This is found in the understanding that nothing vital has been lost — only the noise.
Perhaps the best philosophical view is that life is not worse for what we lack. It is saturated with what we actually live in.