Who's afraid of #FOMO? (And who killed #YOLO?)

I was thinking about hashtags the other day. #relevant

I never managed to sustain both facebook and twitter so I dont know for sure, but it seems like #YOLO has drifted out of use a little bit - and I was thinking, what was that all about? Why did that go so big? And what did it even mean?!

My understanding of the logic of #YOLO is this:
You only get one shot at life, so at all costs, do not waste it. Take every risk, every opportunity. If you want it, take it right now because it's never coming back.

And that makes some sense; it actually reminds me a bit of Nietzsche, which isn't always a bad sign.

For me the defining #YOLO experience, the one that always comes to mind, was my mate - who I'll call Kat for the sake of anonymity - on a girls holiday in Magaluf. Someone suggested jumping off the pier into the sea and it seemed like the sort of diem that just has to be carped and so she went for it! #YOLO. And the water was slightly too shallow and she broke her ankle.

And this is the problem with #YOLO. I have a vague feeling it was pointed out by various sarky middle-aged people - or it may just have been the sarky middle-aged voice in my own head - but the thing is, if you only live once, that's surely all the more reason to be careful!

Of course that sounds a bit granny-ish to say (nothing against either of my grannies - you're great) but I think it actually is a genuine dilemma that cuts right to the middle of the whole #YOLO thing.

Maybe it's easier to see it in terms of #FOMO. #FOMO seems to me to be basically the dark side of #YOLO - for a popular hashtag, it's a shockingly vulnerable thing, isn't it? Our fear? That powerful fear that we can't quite escape because we know we do only live once, and if we miss out now, if we're not there, if we don't try it, even if we do try but somehow we mess it up: this chance is never coming back. As a wise man once said, You only get one shot do not miss your chance to blow, this opportunity comes once in a lifetime. The pressure is immense - uni years are the best times of your life apparently and right now most of my mates and me have only got two terms left. And then its gone. So it better be good, it better be fun, you better make the most of it.

But what are we supposed to do? How could Kat have just stood there and watched everyone take that risk, have that epic moment, and miss out on it? It would have been agonising. But then, how much did that broken ankle force her to miss out on? For the rest of the holiday; for the next few months? And in the last year of uni it's the same, you want to enjoy it but at the same time everyone's always asking, 'Do you know what you're doing next year then?' We're at networking events, and interviews, and writing endless applications and at the same time trying to work as hard as possible so we can get a good enough degree to get those jobs we're hoping for? It's exhausting.

And the bigger the #YOLO slash #FOMO moment, the bigger the risk, the more stark the paradox gets - if I've only got one life then I've got to really live it, but what if I end up throwing it away? Then I'm just a story in the local paper and that's that, I'm never getting it back. Or what about the more likely version, no spectacular accident, no tragic story; what if I just spend my whole life pursuing something, trying to be a [insert valid life ambition here] and I get to the end and look back and think, I wish I'd done something else. What if I end up feeling like I've wasted my only life?

The reality is, that having just one life is a pretty stressful situation. We usually don't think about it on the big scale, but we feel it whenever we face some big decision, the pressure is ridiculous. Our lives are so precarious, our plans are so fragile, the whole thing could swing completely on one choice and who knows what we'll miss out on?

So for me, I'm really grateful that my first thought every time I see or hear #YOLO is: what if you don't? What if you don't only live once? I saw a guy do a spoken word poem once for Easter, called 'the Death of #YOLO' - Jesus, in all seriousness, came back from the dead and discredited the #YOLO hypothesis. There is, at the very least, one exception to that rule, and Jesus said that if anyone will follow him, give themselves to him, he can take us through death with him and out the other side. #You don't OLO - not necessarily.

There's this epic bit in one of the letters in the New Testament where Paul, writing from prison, thinks he might be about to die. But he's happy - strangely, ridiculously joyful - it's the most joyful letter by far of the one's we have in the Bible - at one point he even says this:

For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

He's saying, why would I worry? Look at my options. If I live, whatever happens to me, whether I stay here in chains or wherever I end up, whatever I get to do or don't get to do, I get to do it with Christ. I get to do it with Jesus, in Jesus, with the True King, the ultimate lover, so close to me that no power in heaven or earth could pull us apart. And it's so good to know this - me and Rachael were talking about it the other day when we were trying to make big decisions about what to do next year, we were just reminding each other - all of these options are good options. Because wherever we go we get to love Jesus and be loved by Jesus, wherever we go we get to be part of God's work to redeem the world that he made, wherever we go there is peace, and meaning, and joy, and love. There's no getting away from it, no way we can miss out.

But then there's the other option - to die is gain. Death - the ultimate loss. The final moment where the examiner calls time and you have to put down the pen on the story of your life without even finishing the sentence. You had your chance. But Paul can put his pen on the paper and call death gain. He's excited about it, he can hardly say which he'd prefer, death or life, because he knows for a fact that he's not only living this once. His heart is racing with glorious anticipation - because he's met Jesus, the risen Jesus, the Jesus who has smashed a hole in death and come out the other side and that Jesus has promised that he's going to bring Paul with him. And there's nothing to fear. John Donne was a crazy poet around Shakespeare's time, and he wrote this:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

…

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

And for me, that confidence is so deeply liberating. The pressure is just nowhere near as intense - of course I'm going to go for it, and try to enjoy God and his world and do something meaningful with every minute of the life he gives me, but if it's not everything I hoped it would be; that's OK. If I pour everything into some particular cause and in my whole life I never see what I'd hoped for come to pass; that's gutting but it's OK. If I've given my life to something, and let so many other opportunities pass me by, and in the end when I die everything I've done dies with me; that is sad, but it is, literally, not the end of the world.

On the days when I remember the truth, I realise that I have been set free by the guarantee of glory. Utter joy; unfading beauty; inconceivable depths of love. I've been set free from #FOMO and from paralysing fear in general because #YOLO is not true. For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. What about you?

[That can be a rhetorical question or not it's up to you - have a think about it or feel free to drop me a message, I'd love to hear what you think!]