Recently, I was having some issues with my computer. I use my desktop, my laptop, or both, many times every day so this problem was really weighing me down.

Those issues are fixed now, and I am so happy.

I take my word-processer, my email, and my internet access for granted, but when they aren’t available as easily as usual, I realize how much these tools add to my happiness and how much they contribute to my ability to work easily and smoothly.

However, I suspect that before many days have passed, I’ll take my tech set-up for granted once again. In college, a friend told me about what he called the “Lost Wallet Syndrome.” “No matter what’s happening in your life,” he explained, “if you lose your wallet, you think, ‘How happy I would be if I would only find my wallet! I’d be happy forever!’ But then, if you find it, you’re happy for about two minutes, and then you’re right back where you started.”

One of the unhappy truths about human nature is that it’s hard for us to appreciate what we have, until it’s gone. It’s only when we lose something, or fear that we might lose something, like email, electricity, or air-conditioning–or worse, our health–that it becomes obvious how mightily such things contribute to happiness and comfort.

So often, it takes loss, or fear of loss, to make us we appreciate what we had. “There are times in the lives of most of us,” observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, “when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.”

For that reason, one of the enduring aims for my personal happiness project is to appreciate what I have, for my life as it is right now.

I’ve long been haunted by the words of the French writer Colette. In Robert Phelps’s book Belle Saisons, he quotes Colette remarking, after watching a film that had been made about her, “What a beautiful life. It’s a pity I didn’t notice it sooner.”

I don’t want to look back, at the end of my life or after some great calamity, and think, “How happy I was then, if only I’d realized it.” I want to appreciate how happy I am to know where my wallet is, without having to lose it.