How to get one’s passion and sensitivity back?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): I am at a stage in my life, where I lack passion in everything. Be it my intimate relationships with my loved ones, or be it my career, I feel numb. It is like life has become a movie, or a moving painting, and I am a detached viewer. I want to get my sensitivity back. What can be done about it?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You have already done a lot. That is why you probably feel a little numb. And this numbness, you are also calling detachment.

Detachment is not numbness, detachment is not aloofness, and detachment is not insensitivity.

Have you seen that if there is a cut, a wound on the skin, soon the new skin there comes a little hard? And the deeper the cut or the wound, the harder is the scar. Have you seen it?

That is one effect of having been engaged in battle. It doesn’t matter whether you emerge victorious or defeated. What is certain is that you will emerge with a lot of scars — mental scars. The body and the mind are alike in this sense. Once they get wounded somewhere, there, they develop a certain hardness. Hardness as a defense, as an armor. So that they are not hurt again at the same spot.