This article below resonates with me because I've become increasingly amused by notions like Fear Of MIssing Out, and by statements like "MUST READ," "essential," etc. These notions are fascinating in their ability to affect us in spite of their meaningless - but I'm not sure it's necessarily a good kind of impact.
Because we have a finite amount of time with which to focus our attention, and because we feel the pressure to make the "best" decision around where to do so, I'm laterally reminded of Frank Gavin and his notion of Chronological Proportionality. A historian by trade, this is Gavin's way of expressing our tendency to place proportional relevance on specific events an an attempt to better understand causality, specifically as it relates to our understanding of history. As Gavin notes in his talks on the matter, humanity has an entire history of being completely wrong when going about this task.
While focused on understanding the causal relationships between events, I think the idea applies just as well when it comes to the causal relationships between decisions and happiness. That is to say, we feel the pressure to always make the best decision about how to spend our time - regardless of the fact that we're almost certainly completely wrong about whether this MUST READ or that *essential* article really is that proportionally critical.
There's just not enough time in a lifetime to see every movie, read every book, travel to every country, hear every song, watch every show, or view every sculpture. And that's ok:
It's sad, but it's also ... great, really. Imagine if you'd seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you're "supposed to see." Imagine you got through everybody's list, until everything you hadn't read didn't really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.
