The Joy of Missing Out

A few years ago, a cultural tidal wave swept through our homes, led by a soft-spoken Japanese organizing consultant named Marie Kondo. Her method was simple, almost ritualistic: take every single object you own, hold it in your hands, and ask a single, profound question: “Does this spark joy?” If the answer was no, you were to thank the item for its service and let it go. Millions of us dutifully piled our clothes into mountains on our beds, wept over old photographs, and filled countless trash bags with the accumulated clutter of our lives.

The KonMari method, and the broader minimalist movement it represents, felt like a radical new antidote to the sickness of modern consumerism. In a world that screams at us to want more, buy more, and be more, here was a philosophy that promised happiness through less. It was a quiet rebellion against the tyranny of stuff, a search for peace in a world of overwhelming choice and relentless acquisition.

But is this idea really new? Is the search for joy through subtraction a modern invention? Not even close. To find the true philosophical origins of the joy of missing out, we need to travel back over 2,000 years, not to a pristine, minimalist apartment in Tokyo, but to a tranquil garden just outside the bustling city of Athens. There, we’ll find a philosopher who built his entire worldview on a principle Marie Kondo would find deeply familiar.

Meet Epicurus. If there is one philosopher who has been more thoroughly misunderstood throughout history, it’s him. The very word “epicurean” has become a synonym for decadent indulgence—a lifestyle of lavish feasts, fine wines, and the pursuit of every sensual pleasure. This popular image is, to put it mildly, a complete slander. Epicurus was not the ancient world’s Gordon Ramsay; he was its original minimalist guru. He was a philosopher who argued that the greatest happiness is found not in luxury and excess, but in tranquility, simplicity, and the absence of pain.

Ataraxia: The Ultimate Goal is Tranquility, Not Titillation

For Epicurus, the goal of life, the highest good, was happiness. But he had a very specific definition of happiness. It wasn’t the fleeting euphoria of a wild party or an expensive purchase. The ultimate happiness, he argued, was a state of ataraxia: a profound, unshakable tranquility of the soul, a state of being free from all anxiety, fear, and mental disturbance. Coupled with aponia—the absence of bodily pain—this state of serene contentment was the pinnacle of human existence.

This is a radical redefinition of hedonism. A traditional hedonist might say, “Happiness is maximizing pleasure.” Epicurus flips the script: “Happiness is minimizing pain.” He realized that the frantic pursuit of intense pleasures—fame, fortune, luxury—almost always brings with it a heavy dose of anxiety. The more you have, the more you have to lose. The more you want, the more you suffer from the fear of not getting it. These intense pleasures are like scratching an itch: the temporary relief is nice, but it’s the state of not having an itch at all that is truly blissful. The greatest pleasure, Epicurus taught, is the simple, stable pleasure of a life free from turmoil.

The Epicurean Guide to Desire Management

To achieve this state of ataraxia, Epicurus argued that we must become masters of our own desires. We must analyze what we want and understand its true nature. He sorted all human desires into three simple categories:

1. Natural and Necessary Desires: These are the desires that are essential for life, health, and happiness. They are easy to satisfy and bring great contentment. This category is surprisingly small: it includes things like basic food and water, shelter, and, crucially for Epicurus, friendship.

2. Natural but Unnecessary Desires: These are desires for things that are pleasant but not essential for survival or tranquility. Think of gourmet food instead of simple bread, a mansion instead of a modest house, luxurious clothes instead of functional ones. Epicurus didn't say these were evil, but he warned that they should be enjoyed cautiously, as they can easily lead to anxiety and are no better at producing true happiness than their simpler counterparts. A feast won’t make you any less hungry in the long run than a piece of cheese, but it comes with a much higher risk of indigestion and stress.

3. Vain and Empty Desires: This is the danger zone. These desires are neither natural nor necessary. They are the toxic products of society and false beliefs. This category includes the desire for immense wealth, political power, fame, and immortality. For Epicurus, these desires are the primary source of human misery because they are, by their nature, insatiable. There is no finish line. The person who desires fame will never feel famous enough. The person who desires wealth will never feel rich enough. To pursue these desires is to sentence yourself to a life of constant, gnawing anxiety.

Decluttering as a Philosophical Practice

Now, let’s return to your cluttered living room. When Marie Kondo asks you to hold that unworn, expensive sweater and ask if it “sparks joy,” she is, in essence, asking you to perform an Epicurean analysis of your desires.

What she really means by “joy” is not a momentary thrill, but a sense of rightness and peace. It is a feeling of ataraxia. The objects that truly spark joy are the ones that satisfy our natural and necessary desires—the comfortable chair, the book we love, the tool that works perfectly.

The rest of the stuff—the clothes we bought to impress others, the gadgets we thought would make us happy, the souvenirs from a trip we took for the Instagram photos—these are the physical manifestations of our vain and empty desires. They don’t spark joy; they are monuments to our past anxieties. The closet full of clothes that don't fit is a source of bodily anxiety (aponia). The shelf of unread books we bought to appear smart is a source of mental turmoil (ataraxia’s opposite).

The act of thanking an item and letting it go is a powerful, practical ritual of renouncing a vain desire. You are not just tidying your house; you are tidying your soul. You are actively training yourself to distinguish between the desires that lead to contentment and the ones that lead to suffering.

The Joy of Missing Out (JOMO) is Pure Ataraxia

This brings us to the modern concept of JOMO—the Joy of Missing Out. FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out, is the engine of the Vain and Empty. It is the constant, nagging anxiety that someone, somewhere, is having a better, more exciting, more glamorous experience than you are. It is a state of perpetual psychic disturbance, fueled by social media and a consumer culture that profits from your dissatisfaction.

JOMO is the Epicurean antidote. It is the profound tranquility that washes over you when you choose to stay home and read a book instead of going to the loud party. It is the contentment of a simple meal with friends instead of an expensive dinner at a trendy restaurant. It is the deliberate, conscious choice to satisfy your natural and necessary desires and to let the rest of the world’s frantic, unnecessary striving go. It is the realization that happiness is not found out there, in the next purchase or the next experience, but right here, in the peaceful satisfaction of having enough.

Do Your Possessions Serve You?

Of course, modern minimalism can sometimes fall into its own trap, becoming just another aesthetic to be consumed, another vain desire for the perfect, empty-looking apartment. Epicurus would be wary of this. His philosophy was not about owning nothing; it was about not being owned by your things or, more importantly, by your desires for them. For him, the most important of the "necessary desires" was friendship. He lived in a commune-like garden with his friends, sharing simple meals and deep conversations. A minimalist apartment devoid of human connection would not be an Epicurean paradise.

The true lesson from both Marie Kondo and Epicurus is a call to radically re-evaluate our relationship with the material world. It asks us to stop seeing our possessions as a measure of our worth and to start seeing them as tools for living a good life.

So, look around you. Look at the things you own, the things you want, the life you are chasing. Ask yourself the ancient question: Is this leading me toward tranquility or toward anxiety? Is this a natural and necessary desire, or is it a vain and empty one? Does this truly spark joy, or is it just a source of a persistent, low-grade itch? The answer might just be the key to finding the happiness you’ve been looking for all along.