Testimony 1

Testimony 1:

Nothing is impossible to comprehend.

No, not nothing is impossible to comprehend.

‘Nothing’ is impossible to comprehend. What is it but an empty concept, clear and dark, hollowly bright, but a vacuum, empty. Nothing is not no food. Nothing is not lack.

Out of nothing, something. That is the single most mind-baffling, maze-rendering, cripple-making idea. And it’s only the start.

The problem, or most likely the success, of man is that we create meaning; we are meaning-makers. And where we name, we conquer. When we name, we understand. Well, we presume to understand. And often it is that simple: to name a thing is to know it. But nothing is not such a concept. Nothing is impossible to comprehend. And it’s the foundation of all existence; whether that be God, god, or mere physicality, at the beginning of all, something from nothing. Nothing.

We blithely move forward in life, in a bluster of other, more tangible, problems—arguing about the meaning of life, the existence of God, the purpose of this weirdly picturesque struggle. We pretend that by naming nothing we understand it. We do not.

Think about it. What is nothing? What does it mean that out of nothing, something? Mostly, I picture a blank darkness and, poof, something. But that is not nothing. That is something. In all our conceptions of nothingness, we include space, dimension, extension, but the whole point of nothing is no thing existed. Not just no conscious thing, not just no color, not just no forward motion, not just no sound—nothing. Not even dimension. Nothing.

What is it? You can’t grasp it because there is no it to grasp, no thing, no concept—for if there were something to grasp, then it wouldn’t be nothing. Perhaps you think I’m beating a dead horse, or perhaps that’s what you think nothingness is, death, but it’s impossible to have a sense of the impossibility of your existence, of the absurdity of life, of the freaking joy of being, without first pausing in the hum of the fact that nothing is impossible to comprehend. And yet, glibly, we proclaim ex nihilo, something.

And that is our beginning. Our beginning is impossible. And though I’m no betting man, it makes more sense, laughable illusion that it is, to believe in an impossible start to an impossible being, than to believe in an impossible start to mere physicality. So, that’s where my faith begins: with the existence of God, a being whose beginning is incomprehensible. A belief founded upon the recognition that none of this world makes sense, not even its beginning.

Even now, you’re making meaning, dismissing concern, eradicating complication, excusing ignorance. But it’s still there, haunting the nothingness behind my left shoulder. It’s like recognizing that the world beneath your feet is actually not there, but still you will walk. Even if there is no ground beneath our feet, somehow we’re able walk, so let’s walk, the mind screams. And suddenly, cringing for meaning, we declare nothing is impossible to comprehend; we get it. We know, nothing is impossible to comprehend.