The Joy of Missing Out

You’re Not a Performer—Travel for Yourself, Not for the Applause

There is a kind of magic that lives in silence, a depth of experience that cannot be posted, captured, or translated into the shorthand of social media. It is the hush of dawn breaking over the Serengeti, the muted echo of footsteps in an ancient cathedral, the soundless weight of snow falling in the Alps. But silence isn’t just found in the grand and the remote. It lingers in the everyday, in places unnoticed. The hush of an early morning subway ride, the unspoken pause of strangers as thunder rumbles over a farmer’s market, the fleeting silence between the last bite of a meal and the slow, contented exhale that follows.

In a world where attention is currency, where experiences are often measured by their shareability, choosing silence feels almost radical. We are conditioned to chase, to collect, to curate lives that seem perpetually in motion, driven by the subtle yet insidious killer of joy that is comparison. Social media has turned travel into a performance, each journey a potential highlight reel, a means of accumulating proof that we are indeed living fully. But what if the most profound moments of travel are the ones that go undocumented? What if, in our eagerness to capture and share, we are missing out on something deeper?

I think back to a night in Patagonia. No WiFi, no itinerary, no urgent need to capture anything. Just the wind moving across the valley, the sky so thick with stars it felt heavy, pressing down in a way that made me feel small in the best possible way. I had nothing to show for that night but the quiet certainty that I had truly been there. I have also felt something similar in the most ordinary of places: watching a man prepare tea in silence in a dimly lit stall in Istanbul, or sitting on a park bench in Buenos Aires as the city shifted from afternoon to evening, the air changing texture, the golden light slipping away.

This is the paradox of modern travel: we cross oceans to escape, yet we bring with us the same anxieties, the same need for validation, the same compulsion to be seen. We climb mountains not just for the climb itself but for the photo at the summit. We rush through temples and markets and landscapes, ticking boxes, ensuring we have proof that we were there. But the richest moments, the ones that linger, that etch themselves into the fabric of who we are, often unfold in stillness. They are not performative. They do not demand to be shared. They simply are.

Yet, to say that documentation is the enemy of experience is too simple. There is joy in capturing and sharing, in preserving moments for the future. A photograph can transport us back to a feeling, a journal entry can remind us of details we might have otherwise forgotten. The act of storytelling itself is a way of deepening our experience, of reliving and reframing. But perhaps the key is discernment, knowing when to capture and when to let go, when to reach for the camera and when to simply absorb.

“If it matters, I’ll remember it. If I don’t, then maybe it wasn’t mine to keep.”

I once met a woman in Mongolia who carried no camera, no phone, no journal. She traveled light, moving through the world with nothing but presence. When I asked her why, she smiled and said, “If it matters, I’ll remember it. If I don’t, then maybe it wasn’t mine to keep.” Her words stayed with me, a quiet rebellion against the frantic need to preserve everything. But there is another side to this: for some, capturing is an act of presence. A painter may sketch a street scene not to collect it, but to understand it more fully. A photographer may frame a moment as a way of seeing more deeply. The question, then, is not whether we should document, but why we are doing so.

The beauty of traveling without the pressure to capture everything is that it allows us to experience the world on our own terms. It is not about shunning technology or rejecting modernity; it is about reclaiming attention, about remembering that the value of an experience is not in how it is perceived by others but in how it is felt by us. It is about letting go of the noise, the expectation, the invisible but ever-present gaze of the digital crowd. It’s about chasing “JOMO” or the joy of missing out as the antidote to overscheduled, overprogrammed itineraries. It’s about leaning into what feels good, not what looks good on Instagram.

In silence, we remember how to listen—not just to the world around us, but to ourselves. We notice the way light shifts over water, the subtle scent of woodsmoke, the cadence of a foreign language spoken just beyond comprehension. We begin to understand that joy does not need an audience. That the most extraordinary moments are often the ones that slip by unnoticed by anyone but us.

So perhaps the next time we travel, we can find a middle path. Capture, but consciously. Share, but selectively. And when the moment calls for it, when the world quiets just enough, allow ourselves the gift of silence. Not because it makes for a better story later, not because it proves anything, but because it is ours, and ours alone.