Sunday #5: Last Sunday of 2019

[Photo credit: PlusLexia.]

This essay was begun on Sunday, December 29, 2019.

If Christmas and New Year's happen to fall on a weekday, then the Sunday in between feels like an exhale. It feels like that point when a swing is neither going up or going down, but instead is directly in the middle before a rapid ascent. Whooooossshhhhh!

This is the case as I write this in 2019. Christmas and New Year's fall on a Wednesday--as in between as can be. Also it is the case that I am writing this at my desk in my home office in the evening after I have eaten dinner and cleaned up. It is quiet, and the apartment is dimly lit, as I tend to like it at night. My boyfriend is not here, as he is spending the week in Thailand on a family vacation. I hear that so far everything is going well, with the exception of a flare-up here and there which is so par for the course with his family that it barely merits mentioning. But still, what could one be upset about in Thailand (hint: mosquitos)?

I don't have an adventure to relay to you because I didn't leave the apartment today. I meant to, but then as the day went on the plans I had offered diminishing returns compared with the comfort of home. I spent the time taking down the majority of my Christmas decorations, leaving not much more than the tree with lights and some snowflake candle holders. I am not yet ready to say goodbye to the holiday, so I am letting it go piece by piece, which is the opposite of my usual policy for goodbyes. The tree will likely come down, along with the snowflake candle holders, on the 1st or 2nd.

Other than that I did not go out.

***
I meant to go to the movies, but I changed my plans and watched something here. I meant to stop by a happy hour, but instead I had a glass of wine here and played my favorite music here. I do not feel as though I missed out on anything. I do not have FOMO, the fear of missing out. In fact, if I am missing out on anything, I more often than not prefer to do so.

Missing out implies that what one is doing is not as enticing as what one is not doing.

I think people have it wrong--FOMO is not the fear of missing out on what we are not doing, I think it is the fear of missing out on what we are doing. It is the fear of not feeling alive.

I have learned over time that wherever I am at is far more interesting than where I am not. This is because I am generally interested in where I am--not so much about where I am not. Interest makes a place/person/event interesting. The assessment of whether something or someone is interesting to us is most accurately determined from within rather than from outside influences, even though interest is both self-generated and influenced by the environment. Interest from within is usually not forced.

The easiest way to be interesting to others is to be interested in others. 

I have found that the quality of one's experience in the world is proportionate to the amount of attention one is willing and able to pay to the experience at hand. I don't experience FOMO because I am too busy paying attention to wherever I am and whatever I am doing.

***
I am not a young man, in fact I feel disrespected when people call me "young man". I find it condescending, not flattering at all as a 57 year-old, and when people do it it suggests that they are laying down a hierarchy before the conversation even begins. I can see through it, and I will not have it. One of the gifts of not being a young man is that I have seen things and done things--a lot of things. Some of the things I have seen and done have been fantastic in a number of ways--they are things that I would not have missed for the world. But as I age, I find that what really feels good is sometimes NOT seeing and doing things, which is still doing a thing if you want to argue semantics. In other words, I value the quiet over the noise at this stage of the game.

The quiet is often loud enough for me.

One might call me an introvert, and that would be neither inappropriate or inaccurate, but it is not the whole story. Introverts and extroverts are not on opposite ends of a polarity, instead they are on a spectrum, sometimes moving back and forth in the same way that a guitar player moves their fingers up and down the fingerboard. Introverts are part of the social realm in the same way that all the notes in a chord are music--they are the same except for having different tones. For me, I find that silence and solitude are as stimulating, if not more so, than noise and crowds. My sociability is more about those whom I am engaging with than it is about me.

This is why I decided, on this Sunday, to stay home and engage with myself rather than go out to a movie and happy hour. I did not miss out on anything because I was fully engaged in where I was and what I was doing or not doing. Being out in public can sometimes dilute that engagement, as I have to direct an amount of energy into making sure I am safe. At home, I can lower my defense and more easily engage. And when I can engage, whether it is in another person, myself, an activity, or a non-activity, I have a richer experience.

It is easy to stop FOMO.  Just look around, wherever you are. Even familiar surroundings are interesting if they are truly looked at.