Numb and Nurtured
I’ve yearned for more these past few days,
For deeper truth in modern ways.
If wealth and health and all were mine,
Would happiness not fall in line?
If every care dissolved in air,
Would I still feel life’s weight to bear?
Or is the good life something more;
A fire worth fighting, living for?
I spoke to Baz at break of day,
Of thinkers lost and truths they’d say.
In Socrates’ own hallowed time,
They’d die for meaning, not just mime.
But now we bow to mild decay,
To comfort’s lull and soft delay.
Most I know would never choose
A sacrifice that means they lose.
We walk as shells, as lifeless drones,
In quiet rooms, in prisoned homes.
No cause, no aim, no daily test,
No hunger burning in the chest.
We nurture weakness, call it kind,
But what of strength we leave behind?
We praise the novel, prize the new,
Yet shun the storm we once walked through.
The world has changed—so have we.
We trade our roots for apathy.
Where once we rose to face the fight,
We now stay in and dim the light.
My heart aches loud for those like me,
Who see in struggle misery.
But might it be (a shift in sight)
That struggle births the truest right?
So tell me this, and tell me true:
Is life’s great prize what’s handed you?
Or is the good life not delight,
But knowing that I earned my light?
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About this Poem
Numb and Nurtured is a philosophical reckoning with the modern pursuit of ease. It questions whether comfort, convenience, and self-preservation have come at the cost of purpose, strength, and meaning. Through dialogue, doubt, and a quiet call to reawaken hunger (for truth, for depth, for earned light) the poem asks what the “good life” really is. It’s for those who feel something is missing, even when nothing is wrong.
