If all of your experiences are living through other people’s experiences (or wishing you were living their experiences), then what are YOUR experiences?
These days, it seems you can hardly go anywhere without seeing mostly everyone looking down at their phones, or holding them up to record some cool thing that’s happening around them.
I have some thoughts on this phenomenon…
1. People are actually missing the exact thing that they’re filming. They’re not really present for it, or experiencing it, because they’re focused on “catching it” instead of being focused on enjoying it.
2. People are caught up in “impressing others” with the cool experiences that they saw, but instead of being able to share about this incredible experience through storytelling, they simply whip out their phone and play a video for the person. Instead of inviting them into the experience, they’re throwing the experience at them.
3. People spend so much time and care to whip out their cameras and hit record….for something they often won’t even ever go back and revisit. How many unopened, unshared, unwatched videos do you have on your phone? Exactly.
My challenge for you today would be to put your phone away and really soak in the moments. Be present with your people. And check yourself before you whip that phone out to capture something. It’s likely more valuable to capture the moment in person than capturing a pixelated, shaky video to not watch later.
Sure, there are definitely plenty of awesome things to record, and enjoy watching over and over! BUT, it’s not every single thing.
Sometimes, you WILL miss out on something because it was someone else’s experience and they didn’t record it. Just like there will be times that you can only tell someone about something and they’ll never really know because they weren’t there.
FOMO is a made up thing, and it’s caused by people who are so caught up in not fully enjoying their own life, that everyone else’s experience seems superior to whatever choice they made. If you start living your life on purpose, FOMO will go away ?
If you spend your whole life trying to experience other people’s lives, or having them experience yours, then are you really living life on purpose?
