Why do I only appreciate things after losing them?
The first night in a new home, you might miss the specific creak of the floor in the flat you spent years complaining about. You leave a job and suddenly realize the walk to the office was actually pleasant, which is strange because the value was present all along; it was simply invisible.
A friar's remark
In Much Ado About Nothing, a friar develops a plan. Along the way, he makes a general observation about how people perceive value:
"That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack’d and lost, Why, then we rack the value"
— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act IV, scene I
He suggests that possession obscures the virtues of a thing and we only recognize those qualities once the object is gone.
Possession hides it
The Friar does not blame carelessness. He points to possession itself. When we have something, it recedes into the background, becoming as unremarkable as a wall.
Loss acts as a switch. It turns on the light, revealing what was in plain view but remained unseen for years.
Other related themes include the feeling of never being satisfied (details here) and the longing for a lost time, such as childhood (details here).
What the Friar leaves
The Friar offers no rules or exercises to fix this; he simply describes how valuation works and continues with his plan. The question is about the present:
What have I possessed for so long that I can no longer see it?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.