What am I thinking about?
Absolutely nothing, I say to myself. There is nothing whatsoever that is running through my mind. I have no consciousness, no mindfulness, no subject matter, nor any specific emotion. My mind is a complete mass of unmovable, incomprehensible, nothingness. So, what now? Looking around, I see cars and trucks, buildings being built, older buildings being torn down. I can hear the sound of large machines thumping the ground as it packs it down in preparation for the laying of foundations. I can smell old diesel engines working hard while the warm, still air just sits around me and surrounds the city. The sky is clear, if you consider a slight haze to be clear. The wind is non-existent. In other words, it is business as usual. Yet, I sit here on this black vinyl-coasted park bench and table, laptop ready to take in whatever my imagination feeds it, and I ponder the existence of nothing. Nothing is the absence of anything, yet isn’t ‘nothing’ a ‘thing’ in of itself? If that’s the case, then there can be no ‘nothing’ since there is always something in the absence of anything. Let’s try this again: the absence of anything means that there isn’t anything to hang your hat on, to breathe, to eat, to see, smell, taste, or feel. There is literally nothing at all. But in order for humans to conceive of such a thing, it is called something; it is called ‘nothing’. But the term itself is a thing, and the concept of ‘nothing’ is a thing, therefore shouldn’t ‘nothing’ be a thing, and therefore not a true absence of anything? Take three: In ‘nothing’, there is no ‘thing’ there, literally. So, by definition, it cannot be a ‘thing’. The pure existence of nothing is not-existing. It doesn’t and cannot exist. It is a purely hypothetical concept because, as far as current science recognizes, everything has something, even at the smallest microscopic or even quantum level. So, nothing is an idea and not an actual ‘thing’, therefore ‘nothing’ doesn’t exist. I sit and read the previous passage and wonder the ultimate question: Why? As in, ‘Why did I write that?’ I am not a scientist, nor a physicist. I’m not an expert, nor student, of any particular science. The idea just popped into my head because, to be perfectly honest, I’m bored but yearn to write something. I can’t have a blank screen looking back at me because, as an amateur writer, I have to write whenever given the opportunity. There is a myriad of subjects that I can write on, but they just haven’t made themselves present to my current state of mind and, therefore, they are ‘nothing’ to me, thus the current topic. If I have nothing, then I have nothing to write, therefore I wrote about nothing. If the reader can wrap their minds on that, I pity them for these are the ramblings of a bored mind. A few minutes have passed by and there’s nothing new to report. I remain seated at the same place, watching the same buildings, experiencing the same weather patterns and sounds. Nothing has changed, other than the length and quantity of words on this piece of random subject matter. I do wonder, however, in the absence of ‘nothing’, does that mean that ‘something’ has to exist? There would be a ‘thing’ under either situation so wouldn’t ‘something’ also include ‘nothing’? Therefore, if “‘something’ wicked this way comes,” that could also mean nothing is coming, right? Nothing’s changed, I’m still bored and, if I’m right about this diagnosis, I’m probably a little nuts, too. But at least that’s something, right?
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