I have been without cold air the past few days.

My Air Conditioner is blowing air but it isn't remotely cold. Because the days here in Tennessee have crept up to the mid-eighties, the inside of my home has felt like a lion's mouth. Or, what one could imagine the inside of a lion's mouth would feel like. Hot. Muggy. Sticky. Stagnant.

Once the sun goes down for the night, I pry open my windows and allow the evening breeze to do its magic; shoveling out the heat and shoveling in the cool. I have gotten creative, too. Yesterday, I filled up a bowl with ice and pointed a box fan at the cubes in hopes the pair would distribute cold air throughout my room. It worked about as well as you'd think.

All of this inconvenience got me thinking seriously about the strange relationship between absence and appreciation. Why is it that we have to lose something to truly cherish something? Perhaps there is a way to purposefully do without what we feel is necessary from time to time so that we can appreciate what we have, while we still have it.

Furthermore, the absence of something allows room for something new. It wasn't until these past few days that I realized how good it feels to sleep with the cool night air whisking through my open window.