Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a common phrase these days, but the phenomenon has been around way before Instagram pictures could incite envy in those left out. Even being separated into a group can lead to FOMO. Comedian John Mulaney has a great joke about his elementary school dividing the kids into two different math groups according to ability: “The Blue Angels” and “Group Two” (“we were a swell bunch a kids in Group Two”).
My fifth grade reading class had two groups: The Blue Group, which consisted of most of us, and the elusive Green Group. Only a select few got to be part of the Green Group. At the start of Reading, Mrs. S. would say “Okay, Green Group, you are dismissed.” And the 7 or 8 of them would make a production out of how noisily they could extricate themselves from their desks and chairs. They grabbed their Green reading books and paraded out of the classroom for their “special” group time elsewhere.
When our teacher read the names of the Green Group the first time, I felt certain someone had made a huge mistake. I went up to her desk and, as quietly as I could, asked her about it. She assured me to keep “doing what I do” and that I was a good reader. That I shouldn’t pay any attention to them and to focus on the story we were reading.
I had a case of FOMO — my curiosity about what the others were doing consumed me.
It didn’t make it easier that the Green Group people acted like they were in some sort of secret society. “What did ya’ll do? Where do ya’ll go? What are you reading?” we would ask them. Our questions remained unanswered. The Green Groupers would give us some shoulder shrugs or exchange looks between themselves with half-grins. One particularly annoying boy (who always got in trouble for leaning back on the two legs of his chair) said, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Well… yes, I did want to know.
I prided myself on my scholarship, and if there were an ultimate, accelerated reading group, I just HAD to be a member. If Mrs. S. somehow could not see my reading expertise, I would have to go out of my way to demonstrate it. I started heading right to the SRA (only as I type this, all these years later, do I realize it maybe stood for Student Reading Assessments?) box when I got to school in the morning instead of hanging out in the hallway talking to my friends. I worked through as many pamphlets as I could, mostly boring stories but sometimes public service announcements like how to perform CPR. After about a month or so, Mrs. S. promoted me.
“Green Group, you can go.” Now it was my turn to pull out that Green book instead of the boring old Blue book and head out of the classroom. I followed the others to the empty music room. And here it was… the Greener Grass of the Green Group! Finally!
And yet, as so often happens, my anticipation was met with disillusionment.
In fact, I had been doing a lot more reading and learning back in my old Blue group. Maybe that’s why no Greenies ever gave straight answers about their work — because it was lackluster. Here, we sometimes had a teacher with us, but we did a lot of group work unattended. Sometimes we did silent reading. For one project we performed an audio recording of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man. All I remember about that is most of us hysterically laughing so hard we could barely get the words out to do the tape.
Sometimes our curiosity about what’s “over there” leads our focus to outward longing.
We think about what someone else is experiencing in rooms inaccessible to us. Knowing what’s behind door #1, or #2 or 3 (FOMO) becomes all-important. And while forever striving toward our goals is admirable, we can forget to soak in where we are right now. Learning all the lessons we can where we are now. Appreciating the people around us right now. Seeing how much we can grow where we are right now. So if you’re in the Blue Group today, I hope you are reading and observing some interesting stories.
Who cares what the others are up to? Their grass isn’t necessarily greener.