The Power of Nothing

Nothin' is harder to do than nothing.

I spoke to a navy lieutenant, he told me the punishment for the sailors under his command was to sit, and do nothing. Perhaps it is because anyone joining the military, willingly, deep down wants to be a hero, they want to help, to be useful. Here, nothingness equates to uselessness. For those sailors, seals, cadets, lieutenants, that's worse than losing the war.

If nothingness equates to uselessness, and we are all so hyperactive, does that make us all want to be heroes? And to what purpose; glorification, or genuine concern, maybe it's guilt; internal karma determined by our brain who acts as God, divvying out doses of serotonin.

Is it human nature to be a hero? Is that why the saying, "Don't be a hero" is so popular? If nothing is so hard to do, maybe it's the people, animals, and plants who can so easily sit idle who are the real heroes. Yet we never see that, only Spiderman and Shazam. Heroism is insurance for criticism.

And maybe it's an indicator of maturity, knowing when and how to do nothing. Today a little girl told me of the kids on her bus that would tease her, every morning and every afternoon. Each bus ride she painted to be an event of punishment, she called them 'mockings'. The one after school is always worse.

"The only way to solve the problem is to sew my mouth shut." She told me, casting the image into my head, a disturbing visual to come from a 10-year old.

This trust took so long to build, and all day I fought to do nothing. I am still fighting to do nothing, in the weird ecosystem of a child who tells an adult, who then tells a more-adult adult, who then tells an adult-adult adult. The one who lets the rest of us sleep at night. The one who knows how not to be the hero. The one adult-enough to do the hardest thing: nothing.