Why do we get sentimental for crap that we complain about the minute it’s gone?
The familiar holds more weight than new. See the study of how people rate value of items before and after they are told something is theirs to keep- people rate things, at nearly twice the dollar amount in a lot of cases, higher once they own the thing in question.
But why? What purpose does it serve?
All things have value, but stagnation means death of exploration, so it doesn’t feel like it’s a “tribalism” thing, where we try to keep to the same routines, since that meant death then too, right? We’ve always been explorers, never satisfied with what we have, yet always mourning change simultaneously. Is it a defense mechanism?
I don’t know, I just know that I spent the last three weeks complaining about coworkers, and saying goodbye to a few of them brought a lot of strange sentimentality.
Food for thought, probably for a while.
-H.