Both Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, had they been reasonably emotionally stable, would have gotten more pleasure by participating in the lives of their children than running around like fools chasing another relative high. They would have lived longer, seen more, and grown old with dignity.
We may only live once, but we are all granted countless moments.
It is hard not to see the YOLO mindset as a logical, experiential extension of the Consumerist ethos.
Part of the problem, and a backdrop mentioned by many, is that odd nature of our contemporary life. We are surrounded by luxuries–even the most modest of us–that would have been the causes of war and murder several hundred years ago, but we also all know that everything could literally blow up without warning.
To call it surreal is cliched. Death has always been a constant companion of humanity, and most of us live vastly safer, vastly healthier, vastly easier lives than our grandparents, and on back into the mists of time. Costco is an astonishing miracle. So is every grocery store, every shopping mall.
But at the same moment we won more time, we lost track of what to do with it. Most of us have a hard time knowing what to value and why. In such a situation, a degree of conformism is inevitable. It is comforting, even if to varying degrees emotionally alienating.
And of course the Big Thrill, Mailer’s Orgasm, figurative and literal (I detect, by the way, some Reichian thought in there, but have not read Reich yet, so I won’t comment further), has a strong appeal. Doing rote work, mundane tasks, assuming the constraints of responsibility all appear pale by contrast.
I do increasingly feel, though, that the secret to everything beautiful lies within the mundane, the small, the overlooked. It lies in those overlooked things, which hide timidly, afraid to show their rainbows. They say the path to wisdom is wide, but it looks narrow. The truth is you can have a beautiful day by seeing an orange flower in a window box. You can also buy yourself a $10,000 hooker and lose everything you gained the moment she is done and leaves the room.
Puppies, kittens, small children, flowers, a soft breeze on a warm day, snow on the rooftops, an honest smile: these are how one lives well. Aim low and rise high. I think this is close to a law of life.
Put another way: perhaps only by losing the fear of missing out can you actually participate. FOMO is an eternal corner you are always approaching, but never go around. It is always one step in the future.