Fear of Missing...Everything

It took me ten months in the military to finally identify what's been tormenting me all along.

Since enlistment, I've lived each day as if something was constantly chasing me. "Shouldn't I be doing more? Am I the only one falling behind?"
These thoughts didn't break me mentally, but they never let me find peace either.
Most nights, I'd toss and turn until dawn, unable to sleep.

It wasn't just frustration at being unable to change my immediate reality.
There was something deeper. Something I couldn't name.
For ten months, I've been tracking down this discomfort, trying to understand why my heart always felt heavy, how I could sever this alien emotion.

Today, suddenly, I found the answer: FOMO.

But this wasn't the typical "Fear of Missing Out." It was:

Fear of Missing Opportunity
Fear of Missing Others
Fear of Missing Optimization
Fear of Missing Orbit

What if I'm losing countless opportunities here? What if my friends are slowly forgetting me? What if I'm wasting my youth, losing control? What if I'm being pushed out of the world's orbit entirely?

This FOMO had been shaking my focus. I couldn't fully immerse myself in what I needed to concentrate on. Even my confidence became nothing more than packaging that looked convincing to others. For someone who had always believed "I am always strong," FOMO had already burrowed deep inside me.

Now I have to cut it off.
Thinking can't end with discovery.
It must always lead to "what's next" within me.

Most of military life is filled with training and work.
But things won't be different after discharge.
New projects and businesses will only make life more intense.
The reality is, we'll always be "missing" something.
That's the inescapable truth.

The more ambitious you are, the more inevitable this phenomenon becomes.
So if I don't learn how to handle this isolation and solitude now, the same situation will repeat forever even in work I love.

That's why now is the optimal time to make "missing out" my friend.
I need to learn how to handle it, even turn it into my driving force.
I need to develop the courage to boldly cut away other things to focus on one.

If I can channel any energy in the direction I want, that's enough.
If I can learn to use even the inevitability of loss as my weapon, that's enough.

People always seek their meaning through others.
That line from One Piece: "A man dies when people forget" says so much, especially for us living in floods of social media relationships and information.

But ultimately, we all become alone.
The military is just the beginning.
Eventually at work, eventually with age, everyone faces solitude.
When absorbed in goals, even after achieving them.
It's the same.

Therefore, we cannot seek the meaning of our existence externally.
We cannot define ourselves based on others' interpretations like "I achieved this" or "I have many friends."

I am simply me.

Finding the meaning of one's existence from within—that is true strength.
That strength is braver than the fear of being forgotten.

For some, this manifests through faith; for others, it stems from ancient philosophy.
And for me, that meaning comes from God.

I've been living in the military, chased by FOMO.
Maybe that's why others see me as someone who has accomplished a lot for a soldier.
But honestly, all of that was driven not by inner strength, but by fear.

Now it's different.
Though the surface may look the same, the inside has definitely changed.

The process of accepting and cutting away the fear of being forgotten from something... being in that process right now is what "enjoying the present" means to me.

This is both an honest and embarrassing confession and decision.
Some might call me a coward pretending to be strong.
But that's okay. At least I've acknowledged and accepted it.

Tomorrow will be better.