“Choisir, C’est Renoncer”

But choosing among them felt like a daunting sacrifice. The author André Gide’s famous quote, “choisir, c’est renoncer” (“to choose is to renounce”), became my life’s tragic motto.

FOMO seems to have first appeared two decades ago when a marketing strategist named Dan Herman mentioned it in the Journal of Brand Management.

But the “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent” is older, a phenomenon fundamental to our human condition.