Download The Joy of Missing Out The Art of SelfRestraint in an Age of Excess Svend Brinkmann Books

Product details Hardcover 128 pages Publisher Polity; 1 edition (April 1, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1509531564

The Joy of Missing Out The Art of SelfRestraint in an Age of Excess Svend Brinkmann Books Reviews

• Somewhere between "Yes, we can" and "Just do it" we lost a valuable piece of ourselves. We lost the validation of quiet, and the boundaries of singularity. We became compelled by a conformity society to meet standards and expectations in virtually every. single. area. of human achievement. Like a gigantic game of whack-a-mole, we raise up our kids in an environment where our failure monitors are finely-tuned to any lack or omission in the quest to "keep up", no matter whether the area of expertise is of interest or relevance to that child's potential genius, or their pursuit of happiness.
  
  People who don't know who they are or what they love freeze at the dreadful notion of having to make a choice - not just about important life advancements, but even when staring at a menu - because of the Fear of Missing Out [FOMO]. This fear can be crippling, and FOMO is a very poor counselor indeed for those who seek a life of meaning and satisfaction.
  
  Thank heaven for a slew of new books that are confronting head-on this FOMO. This book in particular turns it on its head, and challenges the assumption; the author posits that there is actually JOMO Joy of Missing Out. What a startling truth, and a healing diversion from the frenetic momentum that has us all running full-speed ahead while looking side-to-side and behind us.
  
  Draw a hot bath; brew some chamomile. Have some brightly-colored gel pens on hand and mark this book up to your heart's delight. You deserve better, and your children deserve less. Not more; LESS. Less compulsion, guilt, fear, conformity - so that they, and we, can pause and milk the joy and meaning out of the path we choose.
  
  This is going on the shelf next to another new book I read this week "Do Less A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Busy Moms" I recommend them both, highly.
• Excellent Follow up reading to Stand Firm. I haven't made time to read Standpoints, his other book referenced often throughout, but this provides expansion on topics covered in those two books, and gives concrete examples of how we can apply his aforementioned Stoic and moderate principles. I found the examples used in his book especially topical with mentions of current US President Trump and self help god Tony Robbins. It helps to have these real world pillars and embodiments of the "being fully ok with myself" and "take what you want" movements, respectively. For, it can be hard to apply many of these abstract concepts without knowing where the line resides between non-application and application to the fault of another/our selves. That's why I found his discussion on virtue as the mean between two vices the most pivotal topic of the book and worthy of further concentrated reading. This all he defines as moderation.
  I never cease to take pause at how similar liberals and conservatives are when their words are digested down to their core principles. When we inspect them with a moderate (but not extremely moderate) lens tempered in the many years we spend building our ethics, we won't fall prey to society's insistence that we want more.
  I highly recommend this book. From a literary standpoint, some of the arguments could use a bit more fleshing out. While 20 pages for each of the five argument makes for a cute book, it gives little room to provide exposition of a topic then application of this developed theory. I'd love to see a follow up work that focuses even more on this application, perhaps even a collection or exercises and quotes to live by with their context fully expounded upon. I know this goes against his beliefs about the self-help movement, but often we can't change the course of a boat without entering it first.
  I'd also like to note that this is a translated work (though I've heard the author speak in English before). Having a liberal arts high school and college background steeped in readings from the works of Homer, Chaucer and Faulkner, I found the prose refreshingly additive to my vocabulary. I do wonder,however, if the author believes this book meets his professorial goals of being something easy to digest, as opposed to the writing style that he might have possessed as a undergraduate (a topic briefly mentioned in the book) ... 4.5/5