Why is it that we tend to only appreciate what is gone after it has passed? Why don’t we take the time to appreciate what we have now? Is there a way to do this?
My late husband Steve and I had a busy marriage. He was a systems engineer, while I was a physician. Although we knew that we were happy, we didn’t take the time to enjoy our happiness. We planned to live to our nineties, knowing that we’d have plenty of time to enjoy life and go on walks together.
Then, suddenly, everything changed. Steve began to experience right-hand weakness that got worse. A MRI showed that there was a very serious brain tumor called “glioblastomamultiforme,” and it had a fatal prognosis. Brain surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy quickly changed things. It was too late to cherish our love, our lives, and our happiness. We had it all one day. What we had the next day was gone.
Many nights, I woke up thinking that it was a nightmare, and that we would soon be back to normal. I made a promise to myself that we would enjoy and cherish our lives from now on.
It wasn’t a nightmare. It was the reality of life, and it was a terrible reality. It would have been so nice to go back in time and be able to return to the life we had before this terrible diagnosis. Steve died 17 months later. Knowing what lay ahead, we would have taken more time for us to appreciate our lives.
However, things do not work in this way. We don’t always appreciate all that we have until it’s gone.
Why is it that we don’t fully appreciate what we have? Our brain is controlled by Weber-Fechner laws that explain how our brain perceives change. Our brain is not aware, or pays attention, to changes that aren’t occurring. When there is a stimulus, however, our brain perceives the intensity and change proportionally to the intensity.
Let’s use money as an example to make it clearer: Two people, one making $5,000 per year, and one making $1 million per year, receive $10,000. The $5,000 earner will perceive $10,000 as huge, while the $1 million earner will see $10,000 as small.
The brain is aware of how large the change is. The brain pays more attention to the bigger change.
Are there ways to make Weber-Fechner laws work for us?
Yes, it is. Let’s harness the power of imagination.
Reddan and his colleagues from the University of Colorado Boulder’s department of neuroscience and psychology compared the effects of deliberate imagination on the brain. They found that deliberate imagination had the same effect on many parts of the brain than reality.
What does that actually mean? Let’s close our eyes and picture ourselves in a time machine. Let’s then take us far into the future. We are 100 years old and alone in a nursing facility. Because all of our loved ones have passed away, we are being cared for entirely by strangers. We have difficulty hearing and seeing. We feel dizzy and have trouble seeing and hearing. When we reach for a fork, our hands shake. We have urinary incontinence, and we can’t fall asleep well anymore. Let’s spend a few minutes more to visualize this.
Let’s take some deep breaths, then let’s go back into the time machine to rewind to get back to today. Let’s take a few deep breaths, then let’s open our eyes to see and hear how well it works.
Let’s move our fingers, arms and legs and notice how our bodies move. Let’s stand up and be proud of our balance. Let’s walk a few steps to be aware of how far we can go. Let’s think about the loved ones around us. Let’s send or call our loved ones to express how much we appreciate them and how grateful we are to have them in the lives of our lives. Let’s hug and appreciate our partner.
Our imagination has created an irreversible time machine that allows us to measure the differences between what we have and what is left.
This is how we can appreciate what we have every day before it vanishes. This is how we can feel deep happiness, not yesterday or tomorrow but today.
