Or Maybe, Being Clueless (In An Era that Slightly Force You to Become An Omniscient); Is Not A Bad Thing After All

Growing up and have (just) reached eighteen, there is a thing I believe people around my age currently have concerns about (especially and specifically, in this era) is not only our way to know and understand about things around us;

but also,

our desire to know everything so much to the point that we ended up becoming afraid and feel left behind when we don't. 

(Even when we actually do not need to know those things since it is actually not necessary or even worse, it may hurt us––but we did look up to those things anyway... and regret it later)

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I used to be this kind of child that gets curious about everything that gets inside my sight, but the thing is I keep all the questions by myself. When I was a child, I only let it out one by one, per day. It was hard for me to open up and ask anything to another person, either I felt my questions were too nonsense or I didn’t have enough courage to talk to the others.

Not to forget that I am the type of ‘intuitive’ yet ‘feeler’ person. When I questioning or pondering about something, I bring my deep (sometimes, too deep) feelings into it (some people that know me called me as ‘a melancholic person’ because of this).

In conclusion, I question a lot of things. In a deep way.

Therefore, when I was a child, I imagined that growing up would be fun because I would have figured out all the answers to all the questions that I kept in my mind.

But growing up is a whole new different world that I imagined it to be.

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I think the phase that I went through when I was a child is pretty basic and general. I mean, when we were children, of course, we naturally become mesmerized by all the things around us. The new toy that you first saw, the smell of food, the part of your body that you just noticed five seconds ago that ‘it exists?’, the person that just went by and later on you found out that it was your father; we were adorably clueless since we were new to this world, I believe that we, by I mean all people here, were naturally born to be a wanderer.

Thus, an era of time holds the most important key to our way of growing up, and we are not having the control to choose in what era we prefer to born, isn't it?

I grew up with technologies and social media. Thus, I grew up thinking that I have two worlds that I own; the real world and the cyber-world. I grew up with the help of search engines. Not knowing something? I straightly go to google, type my question, get the answer five seconds later.

Everything happens really instant and quickly. Including the information that I get, either the information about a new esoteric knowledge or the news from people around.

But somehow, it does get more and more unhealthy day by day.

I realized it not too long ago, that my generation is tend to feel pressured and scared to miss out something, especially when it comes to the surrounding news. It can be a good thing if we actually feel the need to know everyone’s condition and learn to know deeper about social issues to actually help them, but I think we also get curious to the wrong sector;

We get too curious about the private and personal life of another person. We get excited when someone gives us news (or 'gossips') that actually we don't need to know. When we meet someone new, we feel like we have the urge to know everything about that person. We can actually look at how the gossips accounts are more and more happening these days. We can get the excitement only by hearing the ‘well-it-may-not-be-true-tho-actually-but-let-me-tell-you’ news about people. The funniest part in my opinion is when we have the urge to know everything about someone that we feel close to, as it is an unspoken rule.

In our generation, we have this new kind of fear: fear of being missing out and not knowing the recent news about everyone. As if it is a must thing for us to know everything (e v e r y t h i n g)  that had happened, is happening and will happen.

Aren't we?

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I felt it not long ago when I found out about something that I had not known before, related to one of my friends. Strangely, I feel this kind of mixed feelings of being disappointed, feeling not good enough for being a friend, and also a bit hurt feelings since I realized that everyone around me actually knows about it. Is it only me who did not know anything?

Not long after that, I uninstalled Instagram on my phone (not particularly because of that but it does participate to become one of the reasons).

Furthermore, during the journey of 7 months without Instagram, I began to give time to myself. Since I did not have the app on my phone, I spent my time thinking and reflecting on these thoughts rather than scrolling another person’s feed. I do get quite a big effect; I became the last person to know the recent things that happened surrounding me. Call it school-related gossip or some news that got me thinking, “So that could happen…” and all of those kinds of news. It was shocking at first to notice that I became quite… left behind.

But surprisingly, it feels better. Surprisingly, I began to understand that maybe it is okay to not knowing everything.

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It really does feel good and I became thinking that maybe actually some news and gossips… are actually not so important. My life still goes on well even when I did not become the first person knowing the so-called-hot-news-around-me. I am still okay even when I became the last person to know that news (that I think is not so important) when all of my friends had known it two months ago.

Being clueless is not a bad thing after all, by this I refer the world ‘clueless’ towards the people or things that are actually not in my priorities, my business, and do not affect our society.

Social media really makes us feel the urge of knowing everything, it is good if we look it through the perspective that we may learn a lot about social issues (for example the BLM movement, RUU-PKS issues, etc––it is good and I do think we are suggested to learn the issues and pay attention to that since it affects so much to our society. Being clueless and ignorant are two different things), but in the other side, we also begin to develop our curiosity to the things... that actually does not make any effect in our life; "how is the celebrity A going", "Are they––the couple that actually doesn't know you–––have broken up?", etc.

I do realize that I used to become a FOMO person. The one that feels scared to become the ‘missing-out’ kind of people. Then, growing up really makes me understand that actually, we have limited space in our mind, this means we only have limited attention in our life. I began to understand that I do not have to mind everyone’s business and I really do not have to know the life-update in everyone’s lives.

It would become such a waste to fulfill my mind and give my attention to the things that are actually not going to affect my personal life, my surroundings, and our society (issues on a big scale), isn’t it?

Since sometimes, things are better to become unknown and unrevealed. Sometimes, it is better to become clueless. ‘Knowing everything’ is actually… quite scary since it also means we do not have much space left in our mind to allocate the things that maybe are way more worth our attention.

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“Then who is worth my attention?”

During the ‘off from Instagram’ time, I think a lot about this. Thus, I began to search for the answer by prioritizing the people or things in my life. It helps. Then, I also realize that maybe, throughout this time, I often ended up giving my attention to the people or the things that I should not waste too much time thinking about them. I am not saying because they are not important in general (because they all do), but I am saying that maybe, in my list of priorities, there are a lot of things that more important and more worthy to think about.

I don't mind if I am late for any celebrity news as long as I can be there for my closest ones during their tough times. I don’t mind if I am late for any ‘hot gossips’ as long as whenever my friend comes to me, I can give my best to help and accompany them. I don’t mind if I don’t become the first one to know all the photos they post on social media, as long as I know they are physically and mentally okay in real life and I can be there for them when they need me.

So maybe,

In the era that everything happens quickly and tend to rush,

Where we often feel like we have to know every little thing that happened;

We don’t have to.

Unless it is something related to ourselves or our closest ones or our society.
Thus, being clueless towards things that are not so important;

can be a good thing too.

Warm regards,
Oni.

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