I was driving around earlier in the afternoon listening to a song called Mirror, Mirror by Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams’ old band, which is about a guy who looks at himself in the mirror and contemplates how he has become so detached that he doesn’t recognize himself anymore. These lyrics in particular stuck with me:

Tell me something about what I saw in the face of a man
Who once felt it all but feels nothing today

How do you become someone who can feel nothing? I think the song is about a guy who realizes that this has happened to him without consciously trying, but I wonder if you can consciously achieve this. It’s good to feel a full range of emotions, I think, but to experience only a certain type of emotion most of the time is not so good. If what you feel most of the time over long periods of time is not happy and it impedes you in some ways from being as productive as you could be and the negative is always stronger than the positive, how do you become someone who doesn’t have to feel anything anymore? Or, maybe better, how do you become someone who can really live despite whatever emotions you have? I have just been thinking about this…