“See, see!” my three year old demanded from the backseat of the car.

We were listening to a favorite album by a local children’s band; he wanted to see the album cover displayed on my phone. It wasn’t the right cover at all – my computer had mashed it up with the listing for a subpar Arcade Fire album. So instead of a happy looking singer in front of bright colors, the cover was of overly dramatic white marble statues in front of a black background.

“Hun, it hasn’t changed in the last two minutes,” I said. I had showed to him just a moment earlier. “Besides, it’s not even the right cover.”

“I want to see it!” he complained.

“Fine. But this is the last time,” I said, twisting around in my seat and showing him the screen.

As annoying as his insistence was, how often do we feel the need to know what’s going on at all times, even if it’s unnecessary or even harmful? I know I do it All The Time.

It’s the fifth time we check Facebook in a day (or an hour), wondering if more people have liked our post. It’s when we refresh Instagram, worried that we’ve missed something. That need for the new and shiny can distract us from the beauty in front of us. As I was moving towards a particular social media goal, I was checking my numbers obsessively. Once I reached it, I felt such a weight lift off of my brain. While I was in the middle of the chase for “more,” I simply couldn’t find satisfaction.

Or maybe our need to know comes out badly when we assume we have the right to ask people intrusive personal questions. When we ask a person whether they’re going to have kids (or have another kid), we put our need for information and nosiness above their mental and emotional health.

Or maybe it’s when we assume marginalized people always have the time and energy to answer our inquiries about difficult subjects like racism and homophobia. Education is important, but we also have to value people’s time. Reading the lived experiences of folks who purposely put themselves out there to be advocates (and compensating them!) can take a lot of burden off the people we love.

Compared to all that, getting a glance of an album cover for the fifth time in as many minutes seems absolutely harmless.

I absolutely get my son’s insatiable curiosity – I have it too. What he doesn’t yet know – and I often forget – is that there’s plenty around me to look at without scrambling for what’s beyond my reach. In demanding to see things so I don’t miss out, I miss so much that’s already there instead.

Instead of FOMO or FONK (I just made that up – Fear Of Not Knowing), let’s learn to be better listeners in the world. To open our eyes to the people who surround us, not an arbitrary popularity score. To listen to what the people around us are already saying. To love who we are and what we have instead of demanding yet another morsel of information we don’t need.

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