I had a few minutes early this morning where I was trying to sit and write for a while, but nothing came into my mind. Usually waking up in the early morning I figured I could sit and work on several book projects that I started but had put up since I had been so busy with the shop. The shop this season is going gangbusters and keeping me busy most days. It did not immediately occur to me to work on this blog, Traveling Life’s Highways so I sat staring into this blank sheet with nothing in mind. It quickly became clear that nothing would be the mental exercise of the day. I had some time before I needed to leave for a doctor’s appointment and my Physical Therapy session. Nothing, what does it really mean?
Normally trying to write about nothing occurs in an essay, usually one with a word requirement that you need to fill for some reason or another. But here I will attempt to rationalize that nothing doesn’t exist and is a moot concept.
The concept of nothing as a ‘normal mind’ comprehends it is a room, maybe a box, which is void of things, hence “no things” but that, of course isn’t true. Thousands even millions of molecules, electrons, protons etc. fill this space. So, if we move into outer space, where we can have a box that is entirely filled with no “things”, void of anything. Still, however, there is something in this box. There is space. There is an area within this space that can be defined as a volume. Therefore, something is in the box even in the void.
So, ruling out the fact that “nothing” can reasonably occupy no space, can we conclude that anything with no area, space, volume, mass etc. is nothing? Well, in fact, no we cannot. By describing nothing, that nothing becomes a ‘thing’, it has an attribute of nothingness attached to it, which is a thing unto itself. When we call something nothing, it becomes the opposite of that, it becomes something that we can talk about and theorize about and is indeed something.
By using the term nothing, we must call something nothing. “O, that’s nothing…” or “I’m doing nothing,” are completely senseless. Nothing is something. Therefore, I vote that nothing be cast out of use.
Nothing simply does not exist in my mind because once someone says anything about nothing it becomes a “thing”. It’s complicated and my mind is about to explode.
I need to get my coffee before my head explodes and I become the void I was trying to write about.