Nothing Matters

The importance of showing up, what it means when we don’t, and what we can do for others when we’re present.

The Course of Empire: Desolation by Thomas Cole, 1836 (public domain - Wikipedia)

“But immortality is nontransferable.”
— John Updike, 1960

Don’t let the title fool you; this isn’t an exercise in nihilism.

I’ve been thinking about the power of presence lately — and of its inverse: absence.

It crystallized for me last night, when I learned that a friend and mentor of 40 years passed away the evening before.

While I wasn’t surprised (he had been in failing health and entered home hospice care a couple of weeks ago, with doctors not giving him past the weekend to live), it was still something that tugged at my heart and made me realize that I’ll never see him again.

And although the decades had brought an unavoidable absence due to distance, the finality of death means an eternal, unyielding absence.

And that lack of something — that nothingness, even though it means something that won’t appear — holds a great deal of power.¹

“Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love…