I agree with a lot of what Stephen Colbert says here minus the god stuff. (and though I know he is a darling among a lot of groups I still find him annoying to the point that I really had to concentrate just to get through listening to the 7 minutes or so of this clip)

I do think that a conscious life lived without loss and the risk of loss, and the pain that they bring, would be so tedious as to amount to torture. Having said that I have been struggling with something related but different lately. This is a summer of death and loss but in a way that is new to me. I am in my 50s and so when people I know die I may have known them for several decades.

Some of the people I know who die are people I was very close to at one time but because people and circumstances and locations change I have not seen or interacted with them for decades. I am finding that disturbing.

It doesn't seem right that the death of someone who was so important to me at one time should leave me with so little sense of loss. I feel bad because I don't feel all that much about the person who has died. These people were friends, lovers, confidantes or other things. Our relationship may have just sort of run the course or it may have ended badly but no matter what happened it just seems ineffably sad that the loss of a human being should fall so lightly upon my shoulders.

When my big old cat buddy dies a week after my ex-wife dies it is just odd and terrible that time should skew things so much. He was with me for the better part of the last 20 years and she and I have been apart more than 30 so the loss of him is very bright and crystalline and the loss of her is much more dim and soft. And yet, she and I are forever united as parents and it is hard to realize that her death is so difficult for my son and yet less impacting on me than the death of my cat.

I suppose the softening effect of time upon memory is good and protective else we would carry all our memories good and bad forever and I don't think we have the capacity for that.

Tldr: : I am feeling sad about not feeling very sad and that seems very solipsistic (in the selfish sense).

Oh, and thank you for the post Firas.