When we’re surrounded by what we want, we cease to want it. The trivial explanation is that the desire to have is incompatible with the condition of having. “Listen hear, little nipper! You can’t want to have what you already keep!” This is, however, a pathetic, semantics-fueled avoidance of the following truth: when one is in possession of what one had desired, the portion of thought concerned with it suffers a decline, like a sloping mountainside. With time, waves of erosion may even take their toll, prompting calls for the object’s disposal.

Corollary: the more ubiquitous somethings is, the more it assimilates with the background. This is an effective strategy our perception has adopted for lessening the risk of being overwhelmed. Imagine if, instead, for example, each snowflake we saw falling in a storm caught our attention just as had a single snowflake falling alone. The same principle is responsible for our sympathy strings being pulled tighter after reading a profile on a starving individual versus an article about a famine-stricken country involving thousands of people.

Finally, a word on the spotting of things both ubiquitous and sparse. The lessened opportunity to spot sparse things is balanced by their being very apparent when present. Similarly, the heightened opportunity to spot ubiquitous things is dampened by their being so common as to be invisible. This is partly what makes a school of fish such a great defense mechanism.