FOMO and Hakuna Matata

 I often will listen to some podcasts that include young people and their take on the world.  I also have the chance to see this in my professional work as a therapist.  I'm talking about the seemingly increasing belief that what I do won't matter.  Whether people look at what happened in the past and try to say, "So what?  It's done and over.  I don't want to look at it ever again" or the other way of, "Do what you want right now because it doesn't matter in the long run."  What a dangerous place to be.  The Lion King has a scene, which if you have kids you have seen, where Simba is trying to live his Hakuna Matata life where he ignores the past and Rafiki teaching him a lesson that still holds true today as it did then and always has.  We don't forget the past or we are doomed to repeat it.  We aren't meant to dwell in the past either or we forgo the future and the present.  Instead we remember the past and hopefully learn from it so we can move forward in a more healthy and stable way.  On the reverse there are the FOMO crown that seem to believe that you do whatever you want and feels good in the moment and don't worry about the future.  Unfortunately, many of the things happening in our society today have long-lasting consequences that aren't avoidable.  Ignoring what may be the consequences in the future based on what we do today is dangerous and careless.  Just as we aren't meant to live in the past, we aren't meant to dwell in the future either.  We do need to be aware of the future and what it may hold in order to make a better decision of what to do today.  

The best way that I know to demonstrate this is using the analogy of driving.  The things you do from moment to moment in the car is like living in the present moment.  These are the things we need to do to keep us on the path we are hoping to stay on.  Most of the time these adjustments and actions are not huge and grandiose.  They tend to be simple and small actions that we continue to take in order to keep us going where we want to go.  This is like living in the present moment.  The things we do throughout our day is what will keep us on the path we hope to go on.  In a car, there is a large windshield where we spend a great amount of time looking out to pay attention to things such as possible items we need to be aware of, possible hazards, and to make sure we are on the path we want to be on going in the right direction.  We do want to spend quite a bit of time looking at this as it influences what we do in the present moment in order to continue.  We also have a rearview mirror that allows us to look behind us.  Again, this is used to see if there is anything behind us that we need to be aware of that might influence what we are doing in the present.  Just as most of us wouldn't and don't spend a long amount of time staring in the rearview mirror, we also don't want to spend a long amount of time staring into our own past.  Yes, we want to check in with our past now and then to see if there is anything back there that might influence the decisions we are making today as we look forward to the future.

I hope people can start to better understand the balance between the past, present and future in order to make good decisions today and help us make a better future for ourselves and our children while learning from the past.