On Paper

I was thinking earlier about our perception of things. My husband and I are a perfect example. I teach yoga, babysit/walk dogs and he works for Sesame Street and makes video games. We have 2 dogs, travel around the world, scuba dive, see live music often, moved all over this country, have an amazing garden and just started rock climbing. On paper we are the coolest people I know. The reality of who we are is a bit different.

On most nights I’m sound asleep by 10. We sometime spend our weekends doing those “adult” things like grocery shopping, laundry and taking care of the details that keep our daily lives running smoothly. Those are the things that others don’t see. When we notice things, we are only able to observe a small fraction of reality. Being human we use our experiences to form opinions and we can only form those opinions based on things we ourselves know. Our lives happen in the details but often we don’t see those details when we look at someone else’s life. Our perception is just that, our perception.

We live in a world bombarded by information telling us what we need to buy, what we should look like, what kind of life we should be living. And it goes even deeper than that. Even medication is becoming a thing to boast about. Reality television is far from reality and social media just deepens the unreality of everything.

I truly don’t like this new “fear of missing out” that seems to be spreading. Even worse is that we make sayings like this so common place that having fomo is normal or chic. There are many things that we say or do without really thinking about it. Saying we have fomo, calling ourselves fat or stupid. We attach to our emotions as permanent and every time we repeat that we are lacking something we are reinforcing our “failure” and grasp harder for the things that are only our perception.

Wouldn’t it be great if we reinforce what we have? Fofwm (fear of forgetting what matters). You do what you love, I’ll do what I love and we’ll just be happy. No more comparisons and truly just looking at ourselves and appreciating everything we already have. The more you appreciate You the less you’ll notice in others.