Fear of Being Late largely stems from FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, for the uninitiated, which basically means if you aren’t somewhere at a certain time you will not get to experience something everyone else will be talking about or enjoy. Fear of Being Late also refers to the ideology that by arriving somewhere later than the originally stated time, everyone will stare at you as you noisily enter the room, apologizing as you trip over people’s feet or interrupt the punch line during the hosts’ grand speech.
Time is something a lot of people struggle with. Though it is infinite, there is never enough. But at least that provides the opportunity for a deep, meaningful expression for you to contemplate. Having the ability to manage time is so important that many of us will lead with it on our resumes. So naturally it causes a frenzy when someone over-sleeps and misses the first part of a lecture, has their plane take off without them or forgets to set their clocks back for Daylight Savings Time and ends up ringing in the New Year a little prematurely.
Time is often out of our hands and we can’t control being late. For example: No one could have predicted the Autoplay feature on Netflix ruining our lives. But for every excuse there is a way to better ourselves. There are alarm clocks, mobile phone reminders, you can set your clock a few minutes ahead so things look more dire than they actually are. You could even use sticky notes to write personal reminders instead of just crumbling them up. It is possible! We can succeed and overcome one of the greatest challenges known to the civilization of mankind as a whole; a crippling, debilitating omen that looms overhead, mocking us while using its strings to force us to dance around the concept of time; dance like the puppets we are in this crazy game of life where there are no winners, only those who can survive.
Or you can just not be late for once in your life.
