As an avid reader, I’m not sure whether I’ve been absorbed in books most of my life or if the books have absorbed me.
Stories from other minds have shaped how I live, love, and relate with others. Sometimes, their ideas clash inside me, revealing blind spots in my values or prejudices I hadn’t noticed. Books taught me that perspectives can exist at the same time, even if they don’t always coexist. The world, somehow, is big enough for all our small worlds. And when they intersect, if there’s no compromise they clash.
In those moments, we glimpse different perspectives, even if we don’t fully understand them.
I wonder, is there ever a clear right or wrong between compromise and intransigence? I’m starting to think only the consequences can answer that. I have a choice as everyone else does. That might be why I often feel like a passenger of fate. While my choices contribute to the direction of my life, other’s choices seem to nudge me along too. I want to resent the suffering I bear from the decisions of those who came before us but then I remember: the future might suffer mine.
Stories have a way of immersing you in an experience. I've been pulled into books—into words—until I became a pirate or a priest, a pauper or a queen, a villain with a tepid dream, a ghost, or a grieving child. I gave pieces of myself to stories until they became part of my own.
Sometimes, I honestly can’t tell which memories are mine and which belong to the characters I met.
Because of this I can’t clearly remember the last time I had FOMO. Not truly. That emotion doesn’t rise in me often; not enough to shape my choices. If missing out won’t compromise my values, nine times out of ten I’ll let it happen.
Instead of FOMO, I’ve had something else entirely.
Books changed me. Saved me, in some ways. They gave me standards of friendship forged in fire, examples of kindness I believed were possible—because if I read it, it must be real somewhere, right?
But lately, I’ve started wondering:
Am I truly living when so much of life happens in my head?
I have memories of places I’ve never been. Places that don’t exist. They blur into my life and take up space in my mind, pushing out the fear of missing out. But what they leave behind is a quieter struggle:
An inability to live in the moment.
I search for the hills and valleys between those pages but won’t take a moment to appreciate the ones outside my door. I can intellectualize and philosophize all about the world, but what does it matter if I can’t be moved by the whistle of the wind. The call of the birds. The slow progression of life. The mundane things that are a gift God prepared before creating us. I fear I’m missing out on the nuggets of wisdom and pockets of freedom that God secreted away in His world. I fear I’m blind to the treasure hidden in plain sight.
Like fiction, the past and future live in the mind. While they have impact I don’t know how they fully exist beyond those bounds. But the present is where God placed us. That’s where real life happens.
And I often find it hard to stay there.
Maybe I hide in my mind because it’s safer. There, I’m in control. I can rewrite what hurts. Restart what fails. Fly when life keeps me grounded.
But real life is heavier. Messier. And it asks something of me. My choices matter here. My actions have unprecedented ripple effects. I’m embarrassed by my failures and intimidated by success.
So, I guess what I’m trying to say is: Maybe I wouldn’t mind some of that fear of missing out.
Not if it could wake me up to the wonder of now. The fear of missing out seems to be tangled with the will to live. That’s what I’m truly looking for.
I want to want this world again. Not just the ones I’ve imagined.
I want that curiosity and childlike wonder.
I want to find joy beyond the pages and adventure beyond my mind.
I want to explore the Earth God made, the one Yahweh called good.
And maybe, in doing so, I’ll finally learn to be here.
Word play
Intransigence – refusal to change one’s views or to agree about something
Bible Study
Psalm 19:1
Psalm 96:11-12
Musings
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I believe that every book you read changes you; changes how you think, what you say, how you act, or how you look at the world. If a book doesn't change something about you, then it has failed at being a book.