Life/Poetry
See the Sky Through Soul’s Eyes
Some thoughts on FOMO and JOLO
If you cut out a rectangle of a perfectly blue sky, no clouds, no wind, no birds, frame it with a blue frame, place it face up on the floor of an empty museum with an open atrium to the sky, that is grief. — Victoria Chang.
FOMO — Euthanasia:
We die little deaths every day. Those scums of non-living moments become dough and sit pretty inside the thoracic cage making us feel deep pain, and conceive grief. However, Pain is episodic and several episodes of pain which result from those little deaths give rise to the grief continuum. These deaths can be of small hopes, little dreams, facile desires, and of realizations that they will never come back in their first colour or taste. Those lifeless moments slowly take away from us what we often treasure the most — it can be our favourite book we lost, failure to take a vacation we long planned, a job we so enjoyed but are now gone or a mortgaged home taken away by the bank for non-payment. Occasion little or big, for that moment the feeling of loss always tastes the same. We may buy a new book, take a shorter vacation, get a better job later or work hard to repay bank loans, but those feelings when experienced live inside us, making holes that are difficult to plug.
Insecurities touching the sky and self-esteem hitting rock bottom, anxiety grips us tight and we begin to deem ourselves as failures.
The fear of losing out to the world, to our peers, to our neighbours and most importantly to ourselves is the greatest remorse we live with. After all, we are humans, the highest in order, and were created to win. As we pass our days on this planet we visualize if anything is guaranteed apart from our spinning self, it’s a sense of loss/pain/grief. So we perform euthanasia on ourselves every day and be numb to the system’s ways of coping with that Fear Of Missing Out…..
Lament not my dear soul, For tears have filled your heart, Use them to cleanse your mind, Like rain washes earth’s hearth, Die a little every day, till death bids adieu, Blow the ashes to the orbit’s end, greeting life in lieu, Let the days map their way through those terrains rugged, Let the night be pieced with angelic lavender dream nuggets…..
Where ever you are is called Here. And you must treat it as a powerful stranger. Must ask permission to know it and be known — David Wagoner
JOLO-The Re-genesis:
The pain of loss withstood, it’s time to turn around. To realise not everything is meant to be. Not everyday is ours. The mammoth celestial arrangement has its own mathe-magic, where we are the dots trying to connect — to stay relevant. We humans are born intelligent and repeated failure makes us realise however we wish or desire a thing, it will only come to us, if it fits the cosmic design. A little observation about life tells you, each one of us have a trajectory charted out. Things don’t always move the way we want it to, but it works when we align our dreams and goals to our set trajectory. Some of us may take longer to understand that, but we all have to one day — — because that’s life. Over time we learn to let go off things as a coping mechanism and embrace what seems designated as ours.
No. It’s not compromise, but just being wise, which ultimately takes our life towards peace, joy and happiness.
We may lament what we don’t have in our moments of solitude, but we also by now know that was probably not for us to possess. Instead, we find life introducing us to new avenues, which we never knew existed, that fill us up with gaiety we never felt, and take us through journeys never undertaken. We set out on a new expedition to know the unknown, see the unseen and fill our souls with beauty and lungs with fresh air.
We find life giving us more than we had set out to achieve.
We slowly gather, it’s futile to lament what we don’t have because now we have it bigger and better than we ever imagined. We see things more clearly that, it’s meaningless to compare ourselves with others, grieve our assumed losses, because we all are born unique, are here to create our own world, have our own life path travelling to bloom in our own individual ways, knowing if it is not there, it was never meant to be — we experience re-genesis, basking in the Joy Of Letting Off….
The maze of life dwindles faith, The drudgery weakens limbs, Running after mirage in urban haze Life smiles and peeps, “Run, human run”, he laughs The finishing rope not found — Infinite laps in track of life The runner charred to ground…. Stand still, take a pause, listen To the cosmic hum, Telling you ways to live — A life of meaning and fun, Let ‘things’ leave us, just retain your soul, ‘Cos only through soul’s eyes that you make the sky your own!
Reads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-fomo https://medium.com/dancing-elephants-press/enjoy-the-joy-of-letting-go
Though FOMO/JOLO are frequently used in reference to Social Media and its effects on mental health, these concepts existed as theories applicable to society and the people within it since ages.And I thought of harping on the broader scope the concepts provide,here. Thank you Dr. Preeti Singh for this thoughtful prompt and kind tag. Thank you Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles Sharing Randomly and Dancing Elephant Press for this space for mindful publications.
Thanking everyone who cares to take note, engage and inspire!
If you so wish do take a look at the DEP Book Project under process: