Pages

Saturday 26 April 2014

nothing and something


Spaces, pauses, gaps and silences; sometimes ‘nothing’ turns out to be ‘something’ and that something is fundamental and essential. Withoutspacesitishardtomakemeaningofthesewords. Without spaces it is hard to make meaning of life. There is of course physical space; there are things and the spaces between things. In fact there is more nothingness than somethingness in our universe. We don’t question the existence and fundamental importance of these spaces, they just are. But there’s a whole lot of other mirror spaces, other kinds of gaps, pauses and silences that exist. These too are fundamental and essential and we are similarly unaware of them. Conversation without spaces would just be noise, activity without pauses would be unsustainable and of course words without gaps are meaningless. In the same way, it seems to me, that a life lived without spaces, pauses, gaps and silences is in danger of becoming noisy, unsustainable and meaningless. Call these spaces what you will, prayer, reflection, meditation, fishing, surfing, bushwalking, painting, writing…. the list is endless and their importance under rated.
We live in a culture that admires busyness, activity and doing. Where things and the accumulation of things is paramount. Where power and position are defining. We need to be something, do something and have lots of something’s. Somewhere along the way we have forgotten about ‘nothing’, the spaces, gaps, pauses and silences that are fundamental and essential to all that something. Perhaps the ‘nothing’ is actually the real ‘something’ and all the things we thought were something are really nothing…


No comments:

Post a Comment