Oh, Nothing

            Today I can think of nothing to blog about, so I’ve decided to write about nothing. Nothing has become a favorite topic of mine, ever since a friend introduced me to the topic in highschool.

            To put it simply, nothing cannot exist. The word ‘nothing’ refers to the absence of everything, meaning that there is nothing there. However, being able to define that absentness as ‘nothing’ means that it really is something. It is, in fact, nothing.

            By calling ‘nothing’ nothing, we turn the nothingness into a thing. We define it as something defined by the lack of things. Unfortunately, this means that nothing is, in fact, a thing – albeit a rather abstract one. By definition, nothing is not a thing, yet by calling it nothing, it becomes a thing and is therefore no longer nothing.

            Therein lies the paradox of nothingness. It can only be nothing so long as we do not call it nothing, for as soon as we do it becomes something and can no longer be called nothing.

            So, nothing does not exist. But here is where it gets tricky. There is the distinct existence of nothingness that we can no longer define as nothing. Take space, for example. It’s a vacuum; there’s nothing there. No matter, no particles, nothing. However, calling it nothing is fallacious, because by defining it at all we are acknowledging that it exists, making it the opposite of nothing.

            This means that in order to even acknowledge that something is, in fact, nothing, we must pretend that it doesn’t exist. Because, you know, it doesn’t. It would, therefore, be wrong to call it something (even nothing), since giving it a label means that it exists.

            So, every time you encounter something that you suspect might be nothing, the best way to handle it is to give it the silent treatment. Pretend it doesn’t exist. It isn’t rude because it most likely doesn’t.

            Ah, I could talk about nothing all day. Anyone interested in spending a day in my head?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Communication

            I had a thought today. Well, okay, so I have thoughts every day, but this one stood out as one I’d like to share.

            Whenever we are communicating with others, we are functioning under the false assumption that they can understand us. The reason I say it is false is because all words have slightly different meanings to each person.

            For example, the word “yell”, defined as “to say something very loudly especially because you’re angry, surprised, or are trying to get someone’s attention”, inherently has multiple meaning. Yet, to each individual person the word has a different connotation. To some people, a yell is inherently negative, while to others it’s entirely neutral. Some people even use it to describe speaking angrily, even without the volume mentioned in the definition.

            The reason for this is really quite simple: it all depends on the context the word was used in when the person learned it, as well as the exact definition they assigned to the word for themselves. You see, no matter how hard we try, we can’t accurately teach what a word means, because we teach the word using other words. The result is that even someone learning words directly from a dictionary assigns their own understanding of the word to their own definition of the word.

            In the end, we can’t actually accurately communicate with each other. We can get a decent idea of what someone means when they say, “I'm happy”, “This sandwich tastes good”, or “Are people actually able to communicate?” but we can’t know exactly what they mean if we don’t know their personal definition for all the words they used.

            It’s often a minute difference in definition, but because of this, I've heard people having arguments where they were both saying exactly the same thing, only in different ways. Other times, people get upset because their definition of a word has a negative connotation while the speaker’s has a positive one.

            We can only ever do the best with what we have – obviously there’s no way to sync everyone’s definitions. It’s an important thing to keep in mind when communicating, though. Do your words mean the same to you as they do to your listener/reader?

            Did you understand any of that?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.