Do We REALLY Need to Worry About "Not Keeping Up?"

Almost no matter where you look, you'll encounter some variation of the idea that "if you don't keep up (with life, people, your work, etc.) you'll be left behind!"

Tiny wild strawberries in the Pacific dunes

I suppose that makes sense, but we speak of this as if "behind" is some horrible fate we must avoid at all costs.

But is that necessarily true, or is it merely a fabricated cautionary tale, primarily created by marketers to keep us eternally consuming and putting our nose to the grindstone?

I will be the first to admit that getting left behind can be an unnerving experience.

When I was at boarding school in the UK and about 17 years old, I was on the golf team. One time, we were off playing an away match against some other school side, and I went to the bathroom because I had an upset stomach after my match. Well, when I came back out, the minibus with our team had already left and I was stranded at the golf course, left behind because I tended to be rather "invisible," at the best of times.

Nature's patterns

From a different perspective, my elderly auntie — of whom I was very fond — moved at her own pace, rather than at that prescribed by society and the world around her. She could care less "what people and the world were doing," and would sometimes follow the ways of the world, and sometimes ignore them completely. She simply didn't care whether or not she sometimes got "left behind."

I always admired that, and much of that approach to existence dwells at my own core.

These days, much of the fear of being left behind so often involves the fear of what will happen if we're not busting our butts 24/7/365 to keep up with the ostensible "demands" of the world. From where I am sitting, it feels more like an unpleasant case of FOMO than the more traditional stereotype of trying to "Keep up with the Joneses."

For me, this all becomes a question of why we are working so hard to keep up, and for whose benefit we are doing so?

Most importantly, are you thinking for yourself, or are you merely following what you're observing, either in other people or on the pages of magazines, or in TV shows? Remember, it's your life!

Somehow, we have to find a sense of balance, and we have to double check ourselves and make sure that our attempts to "keep up" are a reflection of our own desires and highest and best self. Otherwise, the whole thing just starts to feel like a joke. Or a caricature of the so-called "good life."

I think that's the major reason why I admired my auntie's life the way I did... she lived life on her own terms. Whereas she definitely "kept up" with the trends of the expanding world, she was never attached to adopting any of them. And she had her own reasons.

I remember asking her (she was in her 80s, at the time) why she had always rejected using a calculator for doing her monthly bookkeeping. Didn't she think it would be easier and less time consuming?

She shared as how she felt it would absolutely be those things, and then pointed out that her reason for still doing everything manually was to keep her mind agile and sharp with numbers. And, indeed, she could add up columns of numbers and do long multiplication almost faster than you could put the numbers into what we (at the time) called a "pocket calculator." You still have one on your phone...

Bringing this whole line of thinking back around, the part of "keeping up" I generally end up rejecting is the pervasive need to always strive for everything, like what we already have simply is never good enough.

And yet?

When you were striving to get those things, they were good enough! They only became "NOT good enough" when you discovered that somewhere, someone else had a faster, shinier, quieter, more current version.

Earlier today, I was reading an article that sales of Apple's iPhone 15 were lagging because — it seems — people are growing less obsessed with having "the latest," particularly when that "latest" only is a minor increment different from what came before it.

Regardless, I find myself less and less able to concern myself with "keeping up."

Meanwhile, thanks for keeping up with my blog, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Do you worry about "keeping up?" Do you fear life would leave you behind, if you don't keep up? Or does this question not matter to you? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.05.06 23:08 PDT
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