We have been taught to fear missing out.
There is always somewhere to go, something to experience, another event to attend, another goal to achieve, another post to read, another thing demanding our attention.
We call it FOMO—the fear of missing out.
But what if there is another way?
JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out.
JOMO is the realization that we do not have to participate in everything simply because we can.
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Autumn is my favorite season. We’re getting away from the heat of summer to cooler temperatures. Beautiful fall colors are beginning to paint the canvas of our daily lives. Chefs everywhere are thinking of ways to surprise us with pumpkin spice.
Fall did not wait for anyone’s approval to step out, and neither must we. Nature has all she needs to lead us on the journey of life. We need look no further.
From a Zen perspective, I believe that this has to do with impermanence being visible. The world changes right in front of us.
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Chapter 33 of the Tao Te Ching turns our attention away from accumulating knowledge about the world and back toward knowing ourselves:
Read More“To understand oneself is to be illumined.” — Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33, Arthur Waley translation
Perhaps this is why the teachings become simpler with time.
Eventually, the boundary between practice and life begins to disappear.
We've been told the American Dream is about having more.
A bigger house. A nicer car. More money. More success. More things.
Too often, it has become a life financed by debt and measured by possessions. We spend years working to pay for a lifestyle that leaves us with little time to enjoy the life we were trying to build.
Perhaps it is time to ask a different question.
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I was challenged, by Zen Buddhist Practitioner Fusatsu, to study the Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas. I’m a spirituality nerd so I was all in.
Generally speaking, I did one a day whereby I read it out loud in the morning, again in the evening and I thought about it in between. When I got to the fifth one, I had to stop. It was too important to not give it my complete attention.
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We remember those whose names were never written in history books, yet whose courage lives in us.
Those who endured. Those who resisted. Those who prayed. Those who dreamed of a day they might never see, yet believed would come.
Juneteenth is their story.
And it is ours.
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"Freedom is not a destination. It is a practice."
Juneteenth commemorates liberation.
It marks June 19, 1865, when the last enslaved African Americans in Texas were informed of their freedom, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued. It is a day of remembrance, reflection, resilience, and celebration.
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To be rooted is to be firmly planted, established, nourished from below, and able to stand through shifting conditions. In the natural world, roots are rarely visible, yet they determine the strength, resilience, and longevity of what grows above the surface. In our lives, rootedness functions in much the same way. It is not loud or performative. It is quiet stability — the unseen foundation from which our actions, choices, and presence arise.
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In behavioral science, choice architecture describes how environments shape our decisions—often more powerfully than intention or willpower. What is visible, convenient, and repeated quietly becomes the default. Over time, our lives begin choosing for us.
My spiritual practice has taught me something similar:
We do not live our values once; we live them through the choices our lives make easy.
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