Life & Wisdom Quote by Jessamyn West

Desire sharpens at the edge of departure. West’s line works because it catches a common emotional glitch: we don’t fully value a thing while we’re inside it; we value it when it becomes a boundary we’re forced to cross. “Dear” does double duty here. It means beloved, yes, but also costly. The moment you’re “about to leave,” affection and price converge. What you’re exiting suddenly feels priceless, and the leaving itself exacts a toll.

The syntax is a small machine of inevitability. “Nothing is so…” sets up a sweeping claim, but the second half narrows it to a specific instant - not the past you left, not the future you’re walking into, but the suspended second before separation. That “about to” is the whole psychological trick: anticipation is where the imagination does its worst (or best) work, inflating what’s behind you and dramatizing what you might lose. It’s not nostalgia yet; it’s pre-nostalgia, the mind rehearsing regret in advance.

As subtext, the line is less sentimental than it looks. It implies our attachments are often reactive, triggered by scarcity, not steady appreciation. West, writing in a century defined by migration, war, and rapid social change, understood how often “home,” “peace,” or “youth” becomes legible only in the act of being surrendered. The quote’s intent is a quiet warning: if leaving is what makes something dear, you may be outsourcing your capacity for gratitude to loss.