Taking it for Granted

Through this article, I received from Annie Dillard that she believes that we all overlook very significant things in our lives that we've always had. Once they are gone, however, we suffer and wish that they were here again.

She first expresses this when she recalls the reading about the gold miners. It is so hot in the mine shafts that the companies have to route air conditioning to the shafts. "If the air conditioners break, the miners die." The miners always expect the A/C to be there so that they can do their job, but if it were to go out, the miners would all cease to live.

Dillard, in the end, was trying to express her thoughts through her dismay about the total solar eclipse. Everybody else is fascinated that this huge scientific happening is going on while she describes the bleak landscape and the solemness of the situation. Everybody knows that the sun is going to come back, but Dillard looks at it in a different way. We see the sun everyday, and for as long as we live, it will always be there. But if it were to go, we would cease to exist. "If there would have been people on Earth, nobody knew it."

This thought is simplified through the common phrase, 'You don't know what you have until it's gone'. Her dismay is correctly showing her emotion for the momentary loss of the sun. When the sun leaves, she is showing what a bad thing it would be through her portrayal of the landscape. She's not necessarily saying that we need to worship the sun and all that it brings us, but that we all just must realize what we have and make sure that we never take it for granted.