The Peace of Nothingness

Here are the moments. I am at the beach or walking down an empty street in my neighborhood and then looking up at the sky, I am overwhelmed by stillness. I am engulfed in the timeless void of the moment, how the sky looks the same as it did years before in a similar moment and as it will years from now here or miles from here. In this timelessness I bob contentedly in a sea of nothingness where present and past and future are simultaneously before me and everything seems possible from the safe perspective of doing nothing.


I may tarry here too long because it is effortless and peaceful. This place could be a refuge of rest or healing, in the past it has been both for me. Yes, sometimes we need the luxury of this space that exists between time and commitments. It's comforting and comfortable, the elixir that helps us to forget our anxieties, the seduction of safety we never want to leave. There's nothing to be afraid of here, because nothing is ever undertaken or completed. The march of days continues on around us and we barely notice except to put on or take off our coat with the change of seasons.

The Peace of Nothingness becomes a place to hide from our fears of doing, like Dorothy's field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz. We fall into the trance of sameness and remain in the loving embrace of stupor until one day we wake to realise that months or years have passed and we have forgotten our purpose or where we were on our journey.

Like Dorothy, sooner than later we must rouse ourselves and return to the Yellow Brick Road if we are ever to reach Oz.