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I just caught the movie Garden State for the first time. My friends always told me that I'd love it, and they were right: the film is very "me."

The aspect of it that's resonating loudest right now is what Largeman (Zach Braff) says about feeling numb. It reminded me of a book I read over winter break, The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. In it, the main character, Jesse, is also a victim of perpetual numbness. When she finally finds feeling, she describes it like this:

"I inhabited those moments in a way that was usually lost to me. They came through and amplifier that made the movement of our bodies and the pulsing world around us more vivid and radiant, more real. I could feel how perishable all my moments really were, how all my life they had come to me begging to be lived, to be cherished even, and the impassive way I'd treated them." ~Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

I think we all could use a good dose of "feeling" every now and then. Some of us (including me) more than others, probably. It'll be joyful, painful and, like Kidd says, perishable. But at least we get to experience real, soulful emotion. At least we know there's a reason we're alive.