Today I wanted to write about the joy of nothing. I wanted to write a post the way I usually do, to explain this concept, but a poem came through instead.
Some of the most beautiful things that have happened to me are best expressed as poetry. This is a semi-formed poem. It didn’t become the poem I intended it to be, it became something else.
It was born out of a meditation and a certain knowingness I have come to understand in my life that, maybe there is nothing standing in the way of me and my soul. Maybe it takes absolutely nothing to be joyful.
The Joy of Nothing
I was born
with no clothes on my back, no wealth to my name
No capabilities, no language, no shame.
But yet,
I smiled when my mother touched my cheek.
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When I have fallen in love
with the heart and soul of another,
when my love for another being is so endless
that it cracks my heart wide open,
and I have yet to learn what it is
to lose everything
and so I love my first love
with nothing to lose.
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
And when he has left me,
with nothing
but I have not left myself
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When my heart is broken
into a thousand pieces
and there is nothing there
but an empty space for
new love to enter
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When it rains, and I have
given my umbrella
to a friend who needed it,
I have nothing to shelter me
from feeling something
And so I walk in the rain instead
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When my friends have left,
and I am alone in my home
the loneliness curls around me,
and all I can do is just sit
with nothing and with no one.
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When my own people cannot accept me,
for who I am and
who I was born to be,
I have nothing and
no choice but to accept myself
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When I need a friend,
and that friend says to me
“come on over, but I have nothing
in my house that I can entertain you with”
I go over and we spend the whole night
doing absolutely nothing
together
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When I have no money,
no options, no gifts to bring you,
yet everything I can ever really give you
is within me already.
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When the world has said “no” to me,
And I have no home
and no place to go,
except a small space in my heart
that is lit with old dreams that I gave up on,
but those dreams have not given up on me.
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When I sit with the one I love,
and I look into their eyes and realize there is
nothing about them
that I can or would change.
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When I have worked so hard,
and given my entire life
for something so great
that it doesn’t matter to me anymore
what happens with it, because I know
there is nothing more I could do
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
When eventually in my life,
I had everything,
but nothing gave me joy
that is when I came face to face
with the joy of nothing.
❤
When I am moments from my death,
and it dawns on me that I must leave
everything I have ever known behind
That is the joy of nothing.
❤
I used to believe that I needed something
to be joyful.
But each time I lost one of these things,
I was left with nothing
and that was when I learned about
The joy of nothing.
❤
Now I know that
It doesn’t take something
to be joyful.
It takes nothing.
That is the joy of nothing.
And that,
is everything.
❤
If you like this and you like poetry, head over to the poetry/prose section, to read my most recent poem: Soft.
Softly,m