How We Mistook Numbness for Self-Acceptance
There’s something I saw recently that hasn’t left my mind — a quiet heartbreak disguised as a beach day in Goa.
A row of long chairs, families sunk deep into them, beers stacked like rituals, children being shouted at over things so small they almost don’t exist, and adults pretending — pretending to relax, pretending to enjoy, pretending they are living a good life.
Yet everything about them felt heavy. Not just their bodies, though the bodies told their own story — bloated, inflamed, tired, disconnected — but the spirit inside those bodies, the spirit that once wanted to live, that spirit felt distant. Muted. Absent.
Everywhere I look now, I see consumption — food, screens, opinions, noise — and I can’t help but wonder when we lost the quiet dignity of being.
When did we forget how to sit with ourselves long enough to hear the truth whispering beneath all the noise?
A Nation Comfortable in Discomfort
We have become a society so comfortable in discomfort that we don’t even recognise it as suffering anymore.
We call it normal. We call it life. We call it “this is how it is.”
But this isn’t life — it’s a slow, silent decay.
A decay that shows up as the daily acidity tablets,
the hypertension pills tucked in handbags,
the aches and pains we’ve normalised,
the restless sleep we brush off,
the mental dullness we blame on work,
the emotional numbness we pretend not to feel.
And the strangest part?
We spend all our money trying to look good while never once turning inward to feel good.
We chase beauty through treatments and filters, yet ignore the only place beauty is born —
the mind, the breath, the self.
We’ve confused “self-acceptance” with giving up.
We’ve confused “comfort” with avoidance.
We’ve confused “modern living” with chronic escape.
The Cultural Lie of Indulgence
There was a time when India understood restraint — not repression, not rigidity — but awareness.
Eating was a sacred act.
Stillness was respected.
The body was seen as a vessel for consciousness.
But ego crept in through achievement, comparison, and social hierarchy.
Parents passed down perfectionism instead of presence. And when their ambitions ran dry, their children inherited a restlessness with nowhere to go.
Now we fill that void with what’s easy: food, alcohol, sex, screens, and endless gatherings where nobody really sees each other.
We’ve replaced intimacy with noise, connection with company, spirit with spectacle.
I see men and women puffed up on the outside and collapsing on the inside — smoking, drinking, consuming, wearing shiny clothes over dull energy and calling it “modern life.”
We’ve become a society addicted to pretending.
Even our celebrations are performances of happiness meant to hide how far we’ve drifted from ourselves.
It’s Not Ugliness That Hurts — It’s Unconsciousness
To age, to soften, to carry weight — those things can be beautiful when they’re alive with presence.
But to decay while believing you’re thriving — that’s the quiet epidemic nobody talks about.
We call stagnancy “self-love.”
We call unhealthy choices “acceptance.”
We call numbness “peace.”
True self-acceptance isn’t apathy. It’s honesty.
It’s looking at what’s out of balance in yourself and tending to it with love, not denial.
There is nothing spiritual about overconsumption.
Nothing modern about running from your own discomfort.
Nothing healthy about existing in a body you refuse to listen to.
The Memory of My Own Numbness
I know this life. I have lived it.
A decade of numbness, moving through days with a heavy heart, feeling empty even in rooms full of noise and laughter.
It’s why all of this pains me — because I know everyone is capable of something else.
Something quieter, truer, more spacious.
A life where your essence isn’t buried under routines, fears, expectations, and unresolved emotions.
A life where you feel light — not thin, but light in being, light in spirit.
Alive. Clear. Awake.
Human.
The Soul Suffers When the Body Forgets
Because when millions choose to live half-asleep, the collective soul dims.
The world loses its color. And we all feel that loss.
We’ve forgotten how to breathe consciously.
How to listen inwardly.
How to simply be with ourselves without needing to consume something every second.
We forget that what weighs us down today won’t matter tomorrow like almost everything in our lives.
That the fears we cling to are simply parts of us asking to be seen.
That our power is waiting beneath the dust of years of distraction.
A Different Way Is Possible
I care so deeply because I’ve experienced the other side — the quiet fire of a life lived from awareness, not autopilot.
And truly, all it takes to begin is this:
A moment of honesty with yourself.
A breath.
A gentle willingness to be present.
A soft courage to stop running.
This isn’t judgment. This is love.
Love in its rawest form — the kind that doesn’t want to see you suffer quietly in a life that was meant to be lived with fire.
We don’t need to be perfect. Or beautiful. Or enlightened.
We just need to wake up.
To stop hiding behind culture, religion, and self-image.
To remember the simple miracle of being alive in a body that is asking — gently, desperately — to be felt again.
So maybe the question isn’t about how we look, or what we consume, or even how “spiritual” we appear to be.
Maybe it’s simpler — and harder.
Are we alive in our own skin?
Do we eat with awareness or with emptiness?
Are we dressing up our wounds instead of healing them?
When was the last time we felt light — not in body, but in being?
Because decay doesn’t begin in the flesh — it begins in the places within us we’ve stopped tending to.
And healing, real healing, begins the moment we stop running from ourselves and dare to feel what’s real again.