You know what I need more of in my life? Nothing. Nothing makes me happy. Nothing brings peace to my life. I love nothing. In fact, I think a lot of people would benefit from nothing.
To clear things up, I will explain the concept of “nothing” to which I will be referring for the remainder of this article. Nothing, in essence, is the absence of a thing. Nothing is anything that does not involve any outside factors. It is an action that is not done for productivity, pleasure or any other purpose. The reason behind it is nothing. Nothing can be laying down by yourself letting concepts drift in and out of your thoughts. It can be sitting silently across the table from your best friend while the two of you eat a meal. It can be a long drive with no music and no passengers to keep you company. The beauty of nothing is that it can be anything.
What I love about nothing is that it provides a chance to breathe. I know it’s not exactly an earth-shattering revelation to say that the modern world moves pretty fast, but I can’t stress that fact enough. Our culture is obsessed with constant stimulation and the consumption of content. Every moment needs to be taken up by some form of stimulus, be it music, a video, social media or any other type of meaningless filler. Of course, not all content is meaningless. There is definitely a place for media in human life, it’s only natural. However, there is also a place for silence; a place for nothing.
With the breakneck speed of modern life, I have found it very helpful to take the time to sit down and breathe. Sometimes, I don’t even want to be alone with my thoughts– I just want complete silence for a little while. Though complete escape from all thought is impossible most of the time, it helps to simply minimize the amount of thinking I do. I stop doing any tasks, turn off the song playing in my head and abandon all of the thoughts in favor of the quiet.
One of the many helpful tips I have picked up from therapy is the practice of awareness. It does wonders to let go of everything that preoccupies your mind and just live in the moment, if only for a short time. This moment can be spending time with loved ones or some other activity, but it can also be nothing. Sometimes, it helps to become aware of everything going on in the world around you: the buzz of background noise, the feeling of the seat beneath you, the very act of living at this current point in time. It’s not much (in fact, it’s nothing), but it goes a long way.
Sometimes in life, we all need nothing. I encourage you, dear reader, to give nothing a try the next time you feel stressed or overwhelmed. Nothing may seem like it’s, well, nothing, but in practice, nothing can be everything.
