I’ve been thinking about this phrase lately. It seems like it is widely accepted and reminds people not to take things for granted. But is it really implying that we take everything for granted?
What I get from it is this:
You can’t appreciate something until it’s gone. Most people (and by most people I’m making assumptions based on my personal life and what I’ve observed) have lived most of their life without losing all/most of their possessions. So, does this mean that everything we’ve always had is taken for granted, that we can’t appreciate the true value of our possessions or relationships? Thinking backwards, it makes me think that “You must lose everything to be able to appreciate anything.” It makes me want to wander off into the woods and live as simply as possible so I can see how important things are (if they really are THAT important). What do you think about this?
I think we trade one pleasure for another.
The best way i can say it is with a metaphor.
Imagine that the good things in our lives are like a carton of eggs. (a dozen eggs).
Some people value their life a lot, and prize each egg. Some people value their lives less, but perhaps prize one or two specific eggs. And some people don’t prize any of their dozen eggs.
We all attach whatever value to our own eggs.
So one day all but one of your eggs breaks. Suddenly your last egg shoots up in value.
Even if only one of your eggs break you can appreciate value. Comparing an incomplete set of eggs to the majority of complete sets would be a reminder of “how lucky people are”.
No we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone, but we’re happier with it then without it. And even if we got it back we would forget what it is.
One time my internet was out and i was waiting to get back on it anxiously and then when it finally came on and I opened the internet, I thought… “what do i want to do now?”. I had no answer… I just wanted the convenience and opportunity.
Humans are programmed to treasure eggs, and to hunt more eggs… The more eggs you have the less valuable they seem, like a spoiled child…
It’s very simple…
The relativity of suffering…
“You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” is not entirely true. It is correct that you will miss something when you have lost it but it also means that you can not appreciate something when you have it. Neuropsychologists together with more classically oriented psychologists have seen that after three months, no matter how terrible or how great an event is, the degree of happiness we experience has returned to the normal level -on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is suicidal and 10 is extremely happy- which is somewhere between 5.5 and 6, depending on what culture you belong to.
If two people walk out the door on monday morning and one comes home in a wheel chair, while the other comes home having won ten million dollars on the lottery they will still be equally happy three months later. This is a biological mechanism in our brain that troughout evolution has appeared to keep us from becoming lazy -i.e. non-productive or even counter-productive-, or at least that is the only theory on why we have this mechanism that I have heard.
The very same mechanism can be seen in extreme sports for example, where someone doing parachuting jumps off from 1,000 meters generates X amount of happiness on this scale but still he will have to jump from an even higher altitide at the next jump to achieve the same level. This mechanism is also responsible for certain psychological addictions, such as gambling.
The saying has truth to it but the truth of it primarily lies within the indirect meaning that we can not preserve happiness, rather than the direct meaning.
I tend to think the value we attribute to something only after it’s gone is irrational. I’ve lived long enough to dump a woman. Afterwards, I missed her and wondered if I did the right thing. I might have said “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” But after thinking a bit longer on the subject, all my reasons for dumping her still stood. Furthure, no matter how much I missed her, I was happier without her. If something has true value, and you pay attention and practice gratitude in your life, I think you’ll fully and apropriately apreciate it while you still have it.