Have you ever heard that saying “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone?” The phrase means people often lose appreciation for something due to familiarity, until it’s gone and they finally realize how important it was.
- A lot of times this is referring to relationships or deep problems, such as failing health, but I suppose that it could reference anything at all.
And that’s why I feel like it’s pertinent to ceiling fans. My entire life growing up we lived in houses that were equipped with a ceiling fan in nearly every room. There were more advanced methods of temperature controls, of course, we didn’t go without heaters or central air, but it was standard to have a fan overhead in each bedroom and the living room. I thought that this was normal practice, that every residence had the same ventilation set up, until I moved out for the first time and stayed in a crappy little apartment with almost no air temperature control at all. There, we had no air flow from our windows, a measly air conditioning unit that didn’t work, and no overhead fans to assist with creating ventilation. The next apartment I stayed in was similar, and I began to question my opinion of ceiling fans. Perhaps I didn’t realize how good I had it as a child when I could rely on some breeze from above to cool me down. I started missing the familiar hum of the fan when I slept. I didn’t realize what I had until ceiling fans were taken away from me.