Until It’s Gone

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. And you don’t believe that sentence until you do.

Once upon a time I thought that my partial attention and long distance prayers meant caring. I didn’t live there after all, in those countries where people were hungry, or scared, where children found themselves alone without the guidance and protection of their parents.

I thought I cared when I gave it more than half a thought, careful not to go too far, for fear of allowing myself to fall into that slippery slope of over-feeling for an under-developed world.

So I would travel for a brief moment into my imagination of their world, long enough to think I could understand. Long enough to hope for better, to ask myself what I might be able to do between my morning coffee and my drive to work, or slip in during my thirty minute lunch break – more often than not coming up with little more than a donation or a prayer and moving on.

I had the comfort of distance. And blissful ignorance to the real experience of watching what you love slowly degrade over time, or of seeing the people you called brothers turn a blind eye, bury their heads in the sand, or worse, laugh at the growing flames.

You don’t know what you have til it’s gone.

And now, as I drink that coffee, and I take that drive to work, as I try to take a thirty minute lunch break – I understand that the headlines don’t go to bed just because you did. The people don’t get to look away with you. The experience goes on, even after you’ve moved on with your day, even when it’s somewhere you’ve never been or seen or known.

The innocence, or ignorance, of trusting in the shape of your world, or of thinking for a moment that you knew what it meant to care about others’ – you don’t know what you have til it’s gone.

©️ 2025 Cristen Writes