NOTHING, EVERYTHING, SOMETHING

So I’m sitting in a café doing nothing that would even border on extraordinary. Jus sitting, talking, drinking the same old coffee that I do for 2 years now! Nothing out of the ordinary, but little did I know that the conversation would take a turn into something that I would think about a lot in the hours to come.

A friend talking about The most basic concepts of life. Nothing, Everything and Something. Well hey! These must probably be the words that we utter the most during a day, during our entire lifetime. But do we really understand the real significance of them?? Do we realize that the whole world, the whole humanity rests upon their shoulders?? That the whole world incidentally constitutes and incarnates these three massive words.

Think of a man on the road. A beggar. An outcast. If you look at him, the first thought that would come to your mind would be that he has nothing. He is defined because he has nothing, according to the person who watches him. But does he really? If you ask him, he might actually have something else to say. He might not have any material possessions, but doesn’t his possession of a will to live in all the difficulties count? Doesn’t that make him a possessor of something? According to me it does. He would do and say everything except believe that he has Nothing. Its human tendency. In a situation where all might superficially be lost, one holds on to the last thread of hope and refuses to accept that all is lost. So does the perception of the person observing him count or does the perception of the beggar in itself?

Now lets move on to Everything. A stark opposite to Nothing. A complete negation of Nothing would be called Everything. Today we sit here, looking at all the famous and prosperous people in the entire world, coming to a conclusion that they have Everything! Maybe they do. I wouldn’t know. I can’t speak for them, as I, unfortunately, or I daresay, fortunately, do not belong to this group. A person having all the money in the world need not necessarily have Everything. He does possess everything money can buy. But what about those things that are not tangible?? There might be an absence of intangible treasures that would reduce his life to nothingness. In spite of having Everything, he would have Nothing. Albert Camus, a famous writer of the 20th century once said that he was nostalgic of his life at the time when he was poor. Why would that be, one asks oneself? It is simple of course. He, who had seen and lived in both, the world of misery and the world of complete luxury can say better of what differentiates the world of the assumed ‘Nothing’ and that of the assumed ‘Everything’. So basically, the concepts of Nothing and Everything are interchangeable and in spite of being apparently contradictory, can co-exist.

Moving on to Something. This should be easy I guess. Considering the beggar again. Well he does not have everything, neither does he have nothing. And thus, he does finally have Something. Just like the wealthy and seemingly prosperous, have only a Something and not a Everything. Everybody possesses something. Be it a condo in the most expensive area, or a second hand car, or the love of their life or just the simple will to live. ‘Nothing’, ‘Everything’ and ‘Something ‘need not always be measured by material possessions. They do have a metaphysical dimension. So if we consider every man, and that of course means woman included, we can easily conclude that Nobody has Nothing and Everything, but everybody has Something.

So now we know that man in any kind of situation finds himself with Something. So now how would you elaborate ‘Nothing + Everything = Something’? it is clear that in a situation of Nothingness and Completeness, where the two concepts co-exist, there is always a Something that resides within. Each and every person has their own definition of Nothing, Something and Everything. Reality is Perception. However varied they might be, it always comes down to the fact that in the desire to get rid of ‘Nothing’ and to achieve ‘Everything’, we always, at the end of the tunnel, find only ‘Something’.