FOMO Alert
Many years ago, while on the road to Chicago from Michigan's upper peninsula, I looked up into the sky and glimpsed a rippling curtain of pale pinkish light, and it was the Aurora Borealis. It is therefore technically correct to say that I have seen the Northern Lights, but I've never made that claim because the experience didn't seem worthy. I wanted a front row seat to the Aurora Borealis from a perfect far north vantage point before I could say I'd seen it. I imagined undulations of luminous green, an electric crackle, a sense of being surrounded by the visual music of the spheres. I'd still like that. Yeah, I want the Northern Lights on steroids, the full-on deal.
People tell me that in order to achieve this, I will have to face cold weather and a long expensive trip with no guarantees. I may attempt it anyway someday.But I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I know a few people who are embarking upon elaborate journeys this month in the hopes of experiencing two minutes or so of solar eclipse totality on August 21st. I've heard the rhapsodizing from astronomers, the hype and the huckstering, the almost-religious descriptions, and I played around with a few vague possibilities before I gave it up. Even as recently as two days ago at the urging of a friend, I found myself looking at last-minute airfares to Oregon and googling the $100-per-person camping area she'd found.
What finally turns me off are the crowds. Not to mention that there isn't a single spot along the whole band of totality that is anything but inconvenient.I know that social media will be awash with stunning images, and people who have borne witness will wax poetic or delirious or tedious about it, and I will have moments of envy and remorse at having missed it. But I've arrived at the conclusion that, just as with a relationship, if you have to work too hard at this, perhaps it just wasn't a good fit. Maybe the people who live in that swathe of totality just won the lottery this time, and part of the miracle for them is that they can step outside into their usual surroundings and behold its other-worldly transformation. I have a friend with a cabin in Wyoming who is intentionally vacating. "Too much of a circus," she concludes. Wyoming on an ordinary day is wonder enough for her.
My husband is the one from whom I first heard the term FOMO, meaning "fear of missing out" and I recognized immediately that I suffer from this syndrome. It's a phenomenon fueled by social media, of course, and I'm just chronically restless, insecure, and dissatisfied enough to be susceptible. I am inundated daily by a steady stream of images from other people's travels, by elsewheres and adventures that always seem enticing, and by depictions of accomplishments large and small that often turn out to be mostly promotions for products or self. (Is it bragging, or sharing? If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If you don't post it on Instagram, did you go there anyway?) I post plenty of images myself, this is true, but I'm also fond of words, and it seems to me that although everyone has a platform, very few folks are using words anymore, at least not carefully chosen and arranged in sentences intended for communication and exchange of ideas. But they're all at a party to which I wasn't invited, and they're younger and hipper and far more accomplished, and I couldn't keep up with them anyway.
Do I sound bitter? Maybe I am, a little. And FOMO is something I bring upon myself. But I'm not really upset. The truth is, my wanderlust is tempered by my inertia, and my envy is tempered by an underlying awareness that I'm actually fine where I am. Most of my problems are not location-caused. I recently heard an interview with a computer scientist named Cal Newport, who pointed out that "deep work"...work that is challenging, focused, and meaningful...requires sustained attention, and that we should not underestimate the depleting effect of the constant distractions and interruptions that social media inflict upon us. It got me to thinking that perhaps the most meaningful way I can avoid "missing out" is to immerse myself more deeply into the experience of writing, working, and being right here.In the meantime, the Perseid meteor shower is supposed to be spectacular August 12th, and we have a very good sky. And that rippling curtain of pale pinkish light that I glimpsed in the flat wide sky above the flat wide country in 1972...right there and then...that was the Northern Lights. I never told anyone.