Nothing.

There were a number of things I could've written about tonight, ranging from the common to the niche as the things common to me may not be to others. I could've wrote about the sudden rash of birthdays happening this time of year, but I suppose they happen all year round and I just never notice. I could've wrote about why relatively uninspired games are so addictive, but that perhaps comes simply from the necessity to alleviate boredom or risk brash stupidity. I could've wrote about the process of writing, but that is perhaps too postmodern for me tonight.

So rather than go into the fantastic detail about the way one selects words for best impact, or the way that Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds keeps pulling me back despite terrible controls, or the way that I'm slowly going broke from trying to make my friends feel loved, I will not write about anything.

Most people think of nothingness as the absence of matter and energy. It is, but also included should be the absence of thought and spirit. To believe that the physical world is all that exists is an appealing idea to many, but to me it seems absurd. Thoughts aren't physical, neither are emotions. They can have physical reactions in the owner, but they themselves are not something that you can touch or perceive physically. If you're the sort of person to believe that a god exists, then I suppose that would fall into this category as well. Same with a soul.

With this in mind, one can assume that nothingness might not exist. You can't perceive it, if you were to then you'd negate its existence. The mere action of being in the midst of nothingness fills it with a number of things, from the physical to the thoughts of its existence. You can't prove it exists, because proving it exists would undo its existence.

For this reason, nothingness could never become sentient. Should it ever realize what it was, it would instantly blink out of existence, or transfigure into a new being. Maybe that's how God/the gods/other primal natural force that created all came to be. It was an anomaly that realized it existed. If this thought process has any validity to it at all, it would suggest that God was nothing, but blinked itself into existence on its own.

If so, then what was the spark that pushed sentience? It had to have been something besides sheer will power, as nothingness has no will power. Nothingness has no distinguishing characteristics outside of nothing.

Some would argue then that just because nothingness can't be perceived doesn't mean it isn't there. They might argue that one cannot perceive the air, or the chemical reactions that make up a bottle of fizzy-pop (I just love that word). This is not true, as all physical and metaphysical things have an impact on the world around them, and can be known in this way. The gradual shift in my house's foundation will eventually sink it into the ground, but in the meantime it produces squeaks, knocks doors off of alignment, and a number of other things. The bacteria in the air could eventually try to colonize in my lungs, and produce an infection. Everything has an effect on everything else.

Then one could argue that we are nothingness' effect on the rest of the universe, in some backwards sort of way. This could be argued quite easily, but is disproven in the fact that if there is a rest of the universe, then nothingness isn't there. The fact that we are not part of nothingness makes us there, and in this way gives a relationship to nothingness. It shows that we are not nothing.

So when you feel depressed that nothing is going as you planned it to, you can take solice in the fact that you perhaps are going as nothing planned too.