On desire and missing out

Today I had the chance to go to Disneyland (for free!). Very regretfully, we bailed in the wee hours of the morning. The husband tested positive for covid three days ago, and I got a sore throat yesterday which didn’t let up today.

Throughout my entire day (it’s currently late afternoon), I’ve spent every iota of mental free space experiencing regret, guilt, uncertainty, and conflict over my decision to not go. I have a strong sense that what I did was the right thing for my body and our friends, yet I still can’t shake FOMO from rearing its ugly head. The last time I felt this so strongly might have been my bailing on all the Friday night plans during my sophomore year in college. That was a deep, dark, isolating time.

A factor that contributes to my present discomfort is having a wide open day and feeling like I have to “make the most of it.” For some reason a free weekend day at home feels so much shorter and faster than a free weekend day doing stuff out and about. Trying to channel that expanded time, I find myself in the mindset of “must do, do, do” while in the emotional state of reluctance and anxiety. What results from this combination, along with regret and FOMO? Aimlessly scrolling social media to find that next meager domamine hit.

I was barely self-aware enough to tear my lost disconsolate self away from Reddit and decided to pick up one of the books I checked out from the library, a collection of the works of Rumi. He writes about how most of us experience life as a children’s game:

All people on the planet are children, except for a very few.
No one is grown up except those free of desire.

God said, “The world is a play, a children’s game, and you are the children.”

God speaks the truth.
If you haven’t left the child’s play, how can you be an adult?

Without purity of spirit,
if you’re still in the middle of lust and greed
and other wantings, you’re like children playing at sexual intercourse.

They wrestle and rub together, but it’s not sex!

…

Don’t wait till you die to see this.
Recognize that your imagination and your thinking
and your sense perception are reed canes
that children cut and pretend are horsies.

The knowing of mystic lovers is different.
The empirical, sensory, sciences
are like a donkey loaded with books,
or like the makeup woman’s makeup.
It washes off.

Rumi

I realize that I, too, am just another child in the game of life. This isn’t what I want to be. What are my desires, my attachments here? Fun, friendship, value, status. My outer self sees this day as a heartbreaking loss, while my inner self knows that I’m no worse for the wear. If anything, I’m in better condition having the chance to rest, meditate, eat healthily, and stay hydrated.

I’m in my 30s, upset about missing my chance to go to Disney, about deviating away from a plan I’d been looking forward to for months. How is that so different from an actual child of 3 or 13 who throws a tantrum for not getting to go?

Thinking about the age comparison, it’s peculiar that the experience of Disney has such a strong pull on my desire as an adult. Isn’t that a place for kids, one might wonder. Yet the zeitgeist disagrees. The husband had an annual pass in his mid-20s. A former colleague had an annual pass and enjoyed just walking down the streets with her friends, watching people and eating churros. A friend a year older than me mentioned wanting to get a Disney pass if it wasn’t so expensive.

These empirical experiences cultivate in myself an unexpected pull towards Disney. Is it something I actually desire, or do I desire it because of worldly influences? Something tells me it’s the latter.

I don’t like spending a full day in the sun in the 90s. I don’t like crowds, especially weekend crowds, especially kid-filled crowds. I don’t like waiting in line for hours. I don’t like overpriced park food. I like my friends but I feel uncertain about spending an entire day around a handful of other individuals I’ve never met. Why then, would I be so desperate for the chance to be at Disney today, if not for external influences suggesting that I should?

But if I continue to live my life following desire–and not even my desires, really(!)–I’m only going to be flung about in this experience of life. Caught up in the children’s game, unable to leave the play.