Shadow Life - Anais Nin

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world,
and you believe you are living.  Then you read a
book... or take a trip... 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.
Some never awaken...

Anais Nin