10-2-2025
Let’s talk about nothing. Its edges and its emptiness. The fear it elicits from us hearing its name. Its funny putting a name to something that doesn’t exist. Does giving something a name make it exist?
For the sake of writing this, let’s say ‘nothing’ is ‘something’. I’ll capitalize it. It is seen as a place of blackness, a void. It isn’t death, nor is it birth. And I know it used to be my greatest fear. I feared a place without love, or memory (the two things that have kept me breathing.) I feared a place where I would be alone. ‘Nothing’ loomed over me with a scythe in each moment, especially the ones I didn’t want to end. I dreaded endings and the cold void they left. It began to condition me to fear the good things for I knew the sting would follow. I would feel joy, then the thought of the impending loss interrupted it, leaving me unable to feel the joy at all. It was a paradox. I wasn’t aware of this for a long time, of course.
I was running one morning when I realized this paradox. It was in Santa Fe, on a small running trail in a wash. The cottonwood trees were turning a sunflower yellow that absolutely sung against the blue sky. (If you haven’t seen the blue sky of New Mexico, let me tell you- if blue represents truth, that sky is our salvation.) On this run, I looked up to the leaves, witnessing beauty so arresting it was nearly a blow. The yellow shimmering against that deep blue nearly broke my heart. It made me wonder if I deserved it. I felt humbled within it. Humbled, too, by witnessing how small my comprehension of it was. I couldn’t hold its immensity. I could feel the capacity of my heart, and where the beauty overfilled it and spilled over the edges.
Then came the realisation it would end. And poof, the wonder left me, and was replaced hurt. I wanted to stay in it forever. Yet the fear of its ending is what brought it ending.
The fear of beautiful things ending, is the only ending.
I laughed. I laughed at the paradox of this. How this wasn’t just about the leaves and the blue sky. I laughed and cried at how this too was about loving. How our fear of losing the one we love is all that gets in the way of the love. And what would it look like if we didn’t let that fear in? If we let the love tumble on in us unobstructed by our fear of it leaving? Would it keep going? Where would it go when it leaves? What even holds it?
And there it was…. I saw it then. That Nothing is what holds it.
Nothing is the bowl god puts everything. It is the space that is filled. It is the silence that seems so loud because we hear ourself inside it. I once feared nothing, thinking it was a place, yet grew to learn that a void is not a destination, it is the hands that hold exactly where we are. I was once afraid of nothing, and now I kiss its hands for holding everything I love.
It is the white outside these letters, letting the letters be here.
It is its lack of being that made the edges those yellow leaves in New Mexico. It is the frame of our thoughts, commas at each breath, and the salt to each beginning. I think I may be in love with it, yet I can never touch its hand. I want to thank Nothing for all it has given, yet it has no name. It is what holds a name, and the air on each side of its sound. Nothing is what my hands do not hold out the car window. It is what is before me and behind me, letting all things be their own color. It is the space between thought, holding the shape of memory.
It is trust in its truest form, for it looks outward to all that is, and says ‘I am yours.’
We owe everything to nothing, and everything is all it is.