What Color is Nothing?

Nothing: something that does not exist.  But if nothing is something that does not exist, does it not exist then?  I mean, if nothing is something then it cannot be nothing.  Can something be nothing when that nothing is something?  But then, is or is not the reverse true?  Can something be nothing as in, "it is nothing to me"?  That of course means it means nothing to me.  But even then, doesn't meaning nothing to me, ultimately mean something?  In order for something to mean nothing, it must mean something: that something, of course, being nothing.

What started me down this convoluted maze, this maddening and never-ending rash of questions being answered by questions and answers being questioned by their own answer,  is some reading I have been doing recently regarding God and the creation of the universe, and of the world and of you and of me.  Being human, I am told, prohibits me from really understand how it all came into being.  Surely, I say, God created the universe!  Something or someone had to have set this all in motion.  That's a given.*  But what, whom?  And, even more intriguing than that is, what was it that existed before?  What was God doing before he inspired life?  Always is a long time, and eternity even longer; yet what, pray tell, came before....and ultimately, what will come after?  God only knows.  Or so we hope.

So here's an experiment: try to think of nothing.  Just try it.

Okay, what were you thinking?  Weren't you thinking about something?  Remember nothing is something and if you are thinking of something you cannot think of nothing.  Kind of like that old elephant in the living room 

Aye!  This all makes my head swim.  I cannot still my mind enough to allow nothing to fill it.  Maybe if someone (or no one) whispered sweet nothings in my ear.  Maybe if I do nothing, say nothing, listen to nothing, nothing will happen, but then as it always does, something happens because, well, you get my drift by now.

I love this quote of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Persian Poet and Mystic, who lived 1207-1273: “We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust”.  It seems so magical.  And isn't that what life really is?  Magical, mystical, miraculous?  Coming out of the nothingness, inspired by God into becoming more than nothing, something, someone.

Maybe Woody Allen summed it up best. "Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it."  That said, I think I need to change clothes.

*Maybe not so much a given because it has not been proven but there are very few other theories that could possibly explain how this, and by "this"  I mean this existence we all find ourselves in currently.  Something had to have started it...in couldn't have been nothing.