Too Much or nothing at all?
Years ago, I stumbled on a line by Osho that rooted itself in me like a thorn I could never quite pull out: “The world asks you to toughen up. When you do, you become numb. So, which is worse — feeling too much, or nothing at all?”
The world has always preferred numbness. It applauds thick skin, worships at the altar of toughness, insists that the only way through is to laugh off the cut before the blood beads. But here is the hidden cost: when you armor yourself against pain, you also lock out wonder. You stop bleeding, but you also stop breathing.
In my last article, Resilience Is a Boomerang, I wrote about how the things we survive inevitably return to shape us. Survival, I’ve learned, isn’t always clean. Sometimes it requires its own small death- the quiet muting of the heart. To keep walking forward, you dull the noise of grief. To function, you muffle your joy. That’s the paradox no one warns you about: resilience often comes disguised as numbness. And yet, duality exists. You can be resilient and still be soft. You can be tender and still endure. The deepest resilience is not in those who harden, but in those who dare to keep feeling- fully, wildly, recklessly human, even in a world that insists on anesthesia.
We are not born armored. We arrive porous, holy in our softness, our small bodies wide open to awe. The sting of a bee, the echo of laughter, the heartbreak of being left out, all of it floods through a child like sunlight through glass. But life wastes no time in teaching us to shut the window. A cousin ridicules your voice. A parent’s silence cuts deeper than any slap. A relative’s casual remark about your body lodges like glass you’ll carry for decades. These are the first bruises, almost invisible, but the body remembers. The heart remembers. Over time, heartbreak and betrayal, loss and disappointment, pile on their weight, and the vibrant child who once marveled at ants in a line learns that the only way to survive is to stop marveling.
Some professions demand this kind of numbing. A physician watches a chest rise and fall for the last time, and before grief can land, a pager rips them toward the next crisis. A psychiatrist listens to story after story of violation and despair until the humanity behind the words blurs into diagnosis. To endure, they learn to silence the part of themselves that once gasped, once wept. But this isn’t only their story — it’s ours too. It’s what we’ve all inherited in the scrolling age.
We scroll past devastation with the same thumb that scrolls past banana bread. Bombings. Starvation. Genocide. Swipe. A child pulled from rubble. Swipe. A wedding dance, a war zone, a cooking tutorial, a puppy in pajamas. The shift is seamless, and that’s what terrifies me most. Children are raised on games where killing is scored. Teenagers watch horror before they know how to name their own fear. Adults absorb grief in clips the length of commercials and keep scrolling as if the world hasn’t just cracked open. It is a collective anesthesia. It keeps us upright, maybe. But it is also what is quietly unmaking us.
We are drifting toward a future of efficiency without empathy, productivity without presence. Humans becoming machines who happen to have hearts they no longer use. But the soul was not designed for numbness. The soul was made for aliveness. To ache. To rejoice. To split open. To rise. Even pain, in its rawest form, is proof that the flame is still inside you.
Which is why I return to what I call soul invitations — tiny openings back into feeling.
Breath work not as an escape, but as a key to the rooms where grief hides.
Music and art as beauty’s slow hands thawing the frozen chambers of the heart.
Safe spaces to cry or laugh until the body remembers its humanness.
Micro-moments of presence: watching flowers bloom, listening to bird songs, the hush of a breeze, rain drops on your face
These are the signs that life is still whispering, even when we’ve stopped listening.
And so we circle back to the question. What is worse- feeling too much, or nothing at all? I know my answer. I would rather be pierced by awe than padded by indifference. I would rather drown in the flood of heartbreak and astonishment than wander the barren desert of nothing. Because numbness may protect you, but feeling — feeling is what keeps you human.