Today was made up of a walk on the beach, a yoga session, time with old friends and new, a nap in the sun, a traditional portuguese lunch, watching a sunset, observing a 10 year old boy play with stones, sand and water, walking bare foot and hearing all kinds of conversations in various languages.

All through the day, I felt absolutely nothing. May be it is the precursor of peace, which has been making brief appearances lately. May be not.

This poem ‘Nothing was given to us to enjoy’ by Elan Mudrow says it all :

I knew nothing very well.
In praise of nada, I adorned
No jewelry, no tattoos, no makeup
Plain white socks and a t-shirt
The walls of my home,
Decorated in a tasteful
Sense of nothing.
My food, not spiced
Not salted, not peppered.
I read books about nothing special
You can find them at any nondescript market.
The garbage, picked up on Wednesday
Recycling on Tuesday, nothing changed.
At work, nobody bothered me
They spoke of children, parties
Movies, husbands, in laws, disgruntled neighbors
A whole load of nothing interesting
It could be said that
Nothing really bothered me
I was intrigued with nothing
Or was it that nothing was intrigued with me?
I wrote a memoir, it came out of the blue
From thin air. Where else would it come from?
I found out that
I have nothing in common
With thousands upon thousands
Of nobodies
We embraced each other
And nothing grew out of our endeavors
Except a lot of meaningless talk
Which, incidentally, I may add
Didn’t amount to a hill of beans
Just the way it should
I went on tours
To nowhere in particular
And praised zilch about
The power of nothing
And how emptiness had
Entered my life
I didn’t have much to say
So the tours were short
But there were refreshments.
Meats from animals that
Nobody knew the names of
Bland vegetable plates
That had been sucked of their flavor
Tasteless wines. Bad beer
If there was a glass half full
I would drink the remainder
To make sure it was empty
Mine was a philosophical dead end
An occupy revolution without direction
No bosses, no presidents
To my surprise, people loved it
And embraced it with empty arms
A university was built with no name
In my honor
pedestals of my likeness
Dotted the campus
They looked nothing like me.
I taught graduate studies
On how to read into nothing.
I invested in info-commercials
“How to accomplish nothing
in 0 easy steps”
I saw nothing spread throughout
The world.
Everyone engaged
With hell of a lot of nothing
Nasa went the moon
For what? Some rocks
See the pointlessness?

People climbed Mt. Everest
And ran marathons. When?
In their spare time
Which is just another name
For nothing. Why did they do it?
Because they had nothing
Better to do
But, it was at one of my seminars
When the world, nearly swayed
In a certain discernable direction.
Which is dangerous
And can only be next to nothing
What happened was that
I had a heckler. This is what he said.

“You know, you are really something”
The room went quiet
The look of shock appeared on
My followers’ faces
They grabbed him by the arms
And were about the escort him
Out of the hall
I feared that something was going
To happen to him and that
Would cause a wave of bad
Somethings that could put
The world at risk of fighting
In and amongst ourselves.
Because, that’s what something does
So, in a calm and nonchalant way, I said
“Stop, do nothing to him at all.”
And you know what? nothing happened!
If it wasn’t for nothing, something like violence
Would have occurred.
So, this is what I learned from nothing.
And really, it is nothing that special.
When we have realized that we are nothing
And that we share nothing in common
Only then, can we accomplish
The greatest nothingness never ever achieved
Peace
So, remember. You are not special
You are nothing at all, just like me.