existential

It occurs to me, the more I read and learn, that the crux of life, the answer I have been searching for all along is that everything is nothing.

EVERYTHING is NOTHING.

Sorry for shouting, but it’s just such a difficult concept to grasp, like trying to hold onto a fish, you think you’ve got it then *sloop* it’s gone…

Everything is exactly the same as nothing.

It is a thought that is there in all the great literature, Goethe’s ‘Faust’, ‘Le Petit Prince’, Shakespeare, Burns, Tolkien (yes I am including him, the man’s a genius).

I finished Donna Tartt’s ‘The Goldfinch’ last night and in the utterly devastating final pages one phrase jumped out at me so that I had to read it over and over again:

‘The magic point where every idea and its opposite are equally true.’

Everything is nothing. Black is white. Love is hate. Life is death. Joy is despair.

I have been vaguely aware of this idea, like a black dot floating about on the periphery of my conscious mind for a very, very long time, but it is SUCH a difficult concept to grasp that it has taken me the 19 years since my first attempt at Goethe’s ‘Faust’ to fully assimilate and then to finally be able to articulate it in any meaningful way.

It’s in my book. I have captured it and written it down. A snapshot. ‘L’être (et le) néant’. A glimpse of this greater Truth. The ‘thing’ I have been searching for. The ‘thing’ we are ALL searching for, whether we are aware of it or not. The REASON. The WHY. The TRUTH. As a thought it is still like a slippery fish, like trying to catch a snowflake, you have it then *poof* it’s gone.

It’s too big. It’s too fragile. It’s too important. It’s much too beautiful.

How CAN everything possibly be nothing? How CAN black ever be white? It’s not possible…

But joy can be despair. Life can be death. It is, every day. Love can most definitely be hate.

There is great truth in this insight, but it requires further exploration.

Donna Tartt concludes:

‘I’m hoping there’s some larger truth about suffering here – or at least my understanding of it – although I’ve come to realize (sic) that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don’t, and can’t, understand.’

Kate