Some days I wake up feeling like I’m meant for something extraordinary. Other days I wake up and scroll through videos of raccoons washing an apple for twenty-seven minutes. Most days, I do both. That’s what this is about, I think. Everything. And also nothing. And how they keep showing up to the same party wearing each other’s clothes.
Let’s start with nothing.
Nothing is underrated. Nothing gets things done. Nothing is where ideas nap before they’re ready to make a scene. People say “do something” but honestly, sometimes “do nothing” is the only way you survive. Not metaphorically. Like literally – have you ever not sent that text? That one text? The one that would’ve reopened a six-month emotional ulcer? Yeah. Nothing saved your life that day.
And then there’s everything.
Everything wants attention. Everything is loud. Everything is that friend who shows up uninvited and brings five bags of feelings and a playlist of memories you swore you deleted. Everything demands answers. Everything wants a plan. But nothing? Nothing just lets you lie on the floor in mismatched socks, wondering if you should cut your own bangs or just eat a more watermelon.
Life is this weird soup of both. You’ll spend a decade convincing yourself that everything matters – your GPA, your ex’s opinion, the number of unread emails in your inbox (312, but who’s counting). Then one Tuesday, you’ll watch the sky for seven minutes and realize: huh. None of it matters. Or maybe all of it does. Probably both. Life’s really fucking annoying that way.
Sometimes I’ll cry because I can’t find the right keto treats at the store. That’s a nothing, clearly. But it doesn’t feel like a nothing when you’re standing in front of a shelf of lies labeled “sugar-free” but packed with enough maltitol to send you into gastrointestinal purgatory. You just wanted a snack that didn’t taste like sadness and chemicals but now you’re Googling the glycemic index in the middle of aisle seven, holding back tears and trying not to punch a granola bar.
And sometimes I’ll stare at the moon and feel this aching wonder about being alive. That’s an everything. But I’ll forget it by morning – because my brain is a goldfish with anxiety and a tendency to romanticize its own suffering.
And then there’s this other kind of nothing. The existential kind.
Some atheists say there’s just… nothing. No divine hand, no deeper plan. Nothing to see, feel or hear once it’s over. Just silence and void. Which, okay – honestly? That takes faith too. And sometimes I think: isn’t that kind of like God? Invisible. Intangible. Something you can’t measure but still shows up when you least expect it. Or maybe exactly when you need it.
I believe in God. I believe He saved me the day the car hit me and another ran over my body. I believe He saved me the night I almost didn’t make it and the next one and the next. I believe He was in the nothing – holding me steady when I had no words, no breath, no reason left except maybe one more chance. And maybe that’s what faith is. Trusting the unseen. Trusting that even when nothing shows up… it might just be everything in disguise.
Here’s the point, if there is one (there’s not): you don’t have to choose between the two. You’re allowed to swing wildly between nothing and everything. You’re allowed to laugh too hard at a dumb meme and then spiral into an existential crisis over how sandwiches are just edible folders. You’re allowed to wake up with hope and go to bed with apathy – or the other way around.
You’re not broken for feeling both. You’re human. And being human is weird and exhausting and sometimes kind of beautiful in a “what even is this?” kind of way.
So today, I wrote something about nothing. And everything. And if it made you feel anything at all – or absolutely nothing – good. That means it worked.
Fine. It’s rambling. But so is healing. So is love. So is being here. And you’re here. That’s everything. Or nothing. Or whatever.
That’s the whole point.
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