EMBRACE JOMO

In this video Svend Brinkmann, Professor of Psychology at Aalborg University and

author of The Joy of Missing Out, argues that we should start accepting and
embracing the limits in our life, and that could actually make us feel happier and
more fulfilled.
Our fear of missing out is driven by lots of factors in modern society: social media,
where we can compare our lives with each other’s and show how happy we are (what
if my life is miserable? Should I change something?), the consuming industry, which
constantly tells us that the more we have, the better. So, to experience the joy of
missing out takes practice because we are daily bombarded with possibilities or
opportunities. This idea, though, was not even new in Western Philosophy: indeed
Aristotle already talked about “moderate life”, that is, finding a balance between two
extremes: doing too much on the one hand or doing too little on the other hand, and
this applies to anything in life. Thus, when we tell young people they can do
anything, we are wrong: the fact that anything is possible is, as the speaker points out,
“just an illusion” because we are limited as human beings. Not only are we limited
(and it’s crucial be aware of it), but it’s also a good thing that these limits really exist,
because otherwise we would live in a sort of “empty space” (to quote the speaker)
where the only important things in life would be our own desires and preferences,
without caring about the other people. The speaker then talks about “limitless life”
taking the Emperor Nero as an example, because he could do anything he wanted and
the whole world “would bend to his desires”. As the philosopher Kierkegaard had
already underlined, it psychologically leads to a life of despair, in fact Nero was the
author of a famous fire in Rome, creating something he himself wasn’t able to
control. The speaker is clearly against a life without boundaries, actually, limits are
helpful for our lives, and we should make any efforts to create as many environments
as possible in order to not be tempted, because “we can only resist to everything
except temptations” (quoting a very well-known sentence by Oscar Wilde). Thus,
we’ll be able to avoid the feeling of FOMO and we’ll live a truer, better life.

10 sentences with the verbs studied during our lesson:

1) I hope this nightmarish pandemic will be over as soon as possible: this way,
we’ll be able to take off our masks and GET OUT carelessly.
2) I don’t need to POINT OUT the difference between the English anthem and
the Italian one, do I? I mean, “God Save the Queen” is so solemn and severe,
while “Fratelli d’Italia” looks like a children’s song…
3) The process of STAMPING OUT mafia in Sicily has been a long one and I
think it’ll take a long time to root it out completely.
4) We all know at least one person who spends their whole lives trying to
STAND OUT from the ordinary people. They surely must feel FOMO.
5) Since I’ve been always on a diet for ages, at the ripe age of 51 I am definitely
aware that chocolate BRINGS OUT the best in me.
6) (speaking of which we were saying above) If you plan a visit to Erice, you
can’t MISS OUT Maria Grammatico’s confectionery, famous for her exquisite
almond pastries (the ones with zibibbo? I could literally die for them)
7) When I was younger, I used to HANG OUT with my friends mainly to go to
concerts or to binge-watch musicals on TV. I can’t count all the times I’ve
watched “Jesus Christ Superstar”, “Hair”, “The Phantom of the Opera” or
“Cats”!
8) I’m still trying to FIGURE OUT why there are so many phrasal verbs in
English. Since there are approximately 25,000 of them, this means that if I
wanted to learn all of these nightmarish verbs in a year, I should memorise just
SIXTYEIGHT each day.
9) I love the activity of writing. I find it a cathartic experience, and each time is a
new one. No less important, writing often helps to SORT OUT your thoughts.
10) They always say that If you don't want to receive any emails from them,
you can OPT OUT anytime by updating your account preferences, but we all
know that it’s not true. Once you fell in their databases, you’ll never get rid of
them..