I woke up today with the usual dread of the morning. I didn’t really feel like putting on pants or a bra. I mean, why would I? I have nothing to do, no people to see. I figured I’d just pop in my contacts, brush my teeth, and go downstairs to eat some sugarless cereal, because I’m at least one step closer to entering adulthood if my cereal is bland.
To the average person in the fast-paced nation of America, my day seems like it’s going to be just as sad as my cereal. I will have pretty much no stimulation from the real world, and the likelihood of expending any energy seems slim if I refuse to even put on some pants. Here’s the thing: I really don’t have much to work with. I’m just a teen who can’t have much of a job at her age, and it’s summer, so friends are on vacation, and any school work is out of the question. There aren’t many options, so I have to figure out a way to make the day somewhat interesting so my parents don’t find me wallowing in my own self-pity when they get home from work.
So what do I do? Well, I could make myself feel a little more stupid and watch a whole season (or two) of Bob’s Burgers on Netflix, I could flip through various social media apps wishing I had someone else’s luxurious “beachy keen” life, I could read a book (what’s a book? It’s 2016), or I could just think. Think about what? Oh, you know, just about how we’re all tiny little specks on a slightly bigger speck floating around in the great abyss of nothingness.
Somehow, for such tiny little creatures in such a large universe, we can make our problems out to be gargantuan, bigger than the universe we’re floating around in. Why is having nothing to do such a big deal?
For many, being alone is scary to think about, and I totally understand why. When you finally run out of things to do in the comfort of your own home, you have nothing left to distract you, and you truly are alone with only your own thoughts. Thinking can lead to many good and bad things. The light bulb, one of the most revolutionary inventions of all time, was a product of thought. The convenience of the alphabet that I am using to string these words into sentences had to have been thought of by someone. However, despite all of the great things that result from thinking, people still find it terrifying because thinking leads to overthinking, and overthinking, in many cases, leads to anxiety, and nobody wants to fall victim to anxiety.
In my many days of doing nothing alone, I too have questioned my purpose on this earth, because it often seems like I am just wasting time and space, and feeling like a waste isn’t the best feeling in the world. For those of us who have some trouble controlling our thoughts, existential crises are a pretty regular thing that we are kind of forced to get used to, and boredom does a lot to fuel these. I’ve had a lot of experience in this field, so how do I escape the crippling side effects of nothing?
Well there isn’t really a concrete answer, but I’ll try. My best advice is to make the most out of nothing. The cool thing about minds is that we all have one, even if we don’t all have a car or a job or a phone or a house. The even cooler thing about minds is that the thoughts that are created in them can never be taken away. So yes, you can think about why you’re even here if you’re not even contributing to the world, but on the other end of the spectrum, you can also think of ways to contribute to your world. Anything tangible in the manmade world began in the brain, so take advantage of your clean slate of absolutely nothing because the only time when there are no limits is when there is nothing. Once you think of something, take it and run with it.
It’s hard to build yourself up from nothing, but a job started is a job half done, and soon enough you’ll get used to being alone and surrounded by nothing. Even though my morning doomed the rest of my day to nothing, I thought just enough to conquer the emptiness of nothing, and I found myself doing something. This can be anything you can think of. My method of choice? I channeled my boredom into a keyboard and a digital blank sheet of paper. The plus side: I didn’t even need to put on pants in the process.
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