Drifting in the Space of Ramblings

Ramblings About Nothing

Dedicated to Felix Baumgartner

What is nothing?

Does it exist?

The very conception of nothingness becomes absurd.

Before God, was there nothing? Was there "before God"? What was nothing like before God? Dark? Light? Black? White? Can nothing have a color?

For me, it's too easy to believe in life after death, because imagining that I will turn into "nothing" is so strange, so stupid, and so incoherent that it makes no sense.

How is it possible that everything I think, everything I feel, everything I am simply ceases to exist?

Right now, as I am completely alone in this vast silent space, I try to stop thinking. To think of nothing. But I realize it's impossible.

Even when I try to think of nothing, I start thinking about what nothing is, and soon I find myself unable to think of nothing. It's a mental paradox, almost a cerebral trap.

When we try not to think of anything, we end up thinking about what worries us at that exact moment. Right now, for example, I think I have at most two hours of oxygen left. Two hours must pass quickly now.

Lie in a hospital bed for three weeks. It will feel like you've been lying there for three whole months. A minute may seem like a short time, but hold out your arm extended with a bag containing two two-liter bottles of cola for a minute. A minute will seem like an eternity.

Time is relative.

But what isn't relative?

Nothing itself can be relative from one person to another.

Light or dark. Black or white. Solid or liquid.

They say fish have a memory of a few minutes. Living like that must be the closest to nothing. Nothing is forgetting. Not knowing who you are. Where you are. What you want. What your dreams are. Who you love...

The closest I would come to the conception of nothing is if I were a fish.

A fish swimming in a space of musings that would soon be forgotten.

My musings will soon be forgotten... But they lasted more than a few minutes. I am far from understanding nothingness.

I know who I am, an astronaut. Where I am, in space outside my planet Earth. What I want, which is to live. I know my dreams, to be able to tell people how much they mean to me and how important they have been so far. Who I love... Now I understand...

I love everyone.

All of them down there.

Each one of them, without distinction.