Question

This week, I open up The Man Who Couldn't Blog mailbag to answer a question.

I am good at answering questions, I think. I am a person with more than thirty years experience being alive, and am happy to offer the benefit of my—I admit, limited—experience.

Here's a letter I received:

To TMWCB,

It's not cold in here. Why is it not cold in here? I specifically asked my assistant to make it cold in here, and it just isn't cold in here. Please help. Make it cold in here.

It's Not Cold In Here

Dear INCIH,

It is cold in there. You are not spending enough time concentrating on your skin. Concentrate on your skin. When you concentrate hard on your skin, you will notice that there is a tingle there. That is "cold." That sensation is "cold."

I imagine that it has been a long time since you have felt that sensation. I know it has been a long time for me. Years, in fact. This is common for contemporary executive-class human beings—this absence of the sensation of "cold." And "heat," too. You probably have also forgotten what it is like to feel "hot." That sensation is sort of the opposite of the one you are feeling now.

Living within a sealed glass tube filled with a synthetic amniotic fluid kept at our precise body temperature, as people like you and I do, we forget what differences in that temperature are like. This is the trade-off. We work faster. We miss out on sensory inputs when we don't specifically ask for them.

Please apologize to your assistant. And remove him or her from the punishment cubicle.

TMWCB

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Please buy Mike Topp's new book, Shorts Are Wrong. It's very good.