Edited by Sakshi Bhagat
Looking back on the college experience, she’s confused about how to feel about it. Was it simultaneously the most intellectually nourishing yet personally turmoiled year of her life? Perhaps, yes. It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Yet, somewhere in the recesses of this diseased year lurk some great memories: that of her great roommate, that of the few friends she hopes to cling onto for life, that of foods she’s fallen in love with, that of red walls she considers hallowed now, that of dealing with an annoying bureaucracy… these memories leave a bittersweet taste on her tongue.
It was simultaneously the best and worst year of her life.
It was simultaneously monumentally difficult yet astonishingly easy.
What puzzles her, at this juncture in time, is the specter of the college experience. This so-called thing that’s supposed to be incredibly amazing yet also seems incredibly futile. The college experience, summed up, to her seems rather fragile in its narrowness: some stuff social, some stuff illicit, some stuff so infuriatingly mundane, that she couldn’t do much with. She doesn’t know what to make of this revelation: is there something wrong with her, or is there something wrong with the very expectation of these four years being the best of your life?
For, she sorely wonders: if these four years were the best she’d ever have, then life was going to be quite dull. Not bad. Just dull.
If college is touted as the pinnacle of youthful exuberance and personal growth, then she is left in a state of bewilderment and dread for the future. For if college was all this for her rather than a joyous adventure, is the future even bleaker?
Let’s talk of that thing called self-love, she muses to herself. Is it self-love to fault oneself for not engaging wholly in things so trivial when one’s mental condition was such that they cannot think beyond themselves? Or is it unlocking the capacity to think beyond oneself which will alleviate said mental condition? Or is it just plain old narcissism disguised as an excuse? Is she a well-dressed, intellectual-sounding, normal-seeming sociopath? Well, that may be a bit crude as a characterisation of her self, some corner of her mind concedes. One is truly one’s own worst enemy, it is the mind fighting against the mind. Or perhaps this is not a matter of the general oneself, but rather a matter of the specific herself.
Painting something as normal doesn’t make it so, right?
She will look at her intellectual horizons, which have expanded. She will look at her material prospects, which seem bright. She will look at her life spanning further, which seems like it is on track. She will think: “Perhaps I’ll be okay. In the long term. But it is this present that I am missing out on. And this present has emboldened me, passionately made me declare missing itself as a huge fear.”
FOMO: Fear of Missing Out. Four words. Four letters. F for Fear. F for Four. F for Fuck.
Fuck. How did we get here? We’re brave. We’re smart. We’re strong. We’re self-assured. We’re us. We’re normal.
That fear has a way of making her feel not normal. Not just that- it makes her feel abnormal. Because that’s college, right? This expectation that everyday is just so fun. This college experience should be so lively. So happy.
Especially this college- this- this liberal utopia, which she too has to concur, affords more freedoms than the universities of the capital, or other national institutions her friends study at. Perhaps the greatness of it all makes it worse. Perhaps if it wasn’t so great, she wouldn’t feel terrible about missing out on this cultured student body, these hallowed halls with their bazillion guest lectures, this grand library, these amazing ideas.
She shuts it all down. She focuses on the present. She breathes. She fucking breathes. She will be herself. She is herself. Today, tomorrow. At Ashoka, after Ashoka. She does not need to freak out right now.
She is strong, She is smart. She is strong. She is self-assured. She is herself. She is normal.
She has to be.
If she is not, she might just break apart even more. Which is laughable, but true. Fragility is perhaps the signature accessory, one she is destined to adorn. After all, without fragility, she would be left with the possibility of nothing but sociopathy.
Or, circularity and repetition is perhaps the law of FOMO.