Just found this quote and really like it.  I think it explains what I was trying to get down in my post a couple of days ago.

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living.  Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or  you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are  hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first,  restlessness. The second symptom(when hibernating becomes dangerous  and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears  like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car.  They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock  treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them  and saves them from death." ~Anais Nin