still.

There's a moment between the end of one breath and the start of another that feels like falling. It's not a dramatic fall – no plummeting or wind-whipped chaos – but a quiet drop. Like a marble slipping into a well. I used to fill that moment with something: music, notifications, banter – noise. Anything to avoid the drop.

But the void is unavoidable. It waits, not like a predator, but like a mirror. And like a mirror, it reflects not what we want to see, but rather what is.

We're told to seek fulfillment, chase passions, find purpose. So we run – toward careers, lovers, and philosophies. We curate, edit, and present. We stay in motion because motion feels like meaning. But still, in the quiet moments, the question hums beneath the surface: What if none of it means anything?

That question used to paralyze me. The idea of nothingness felt like failure. As if admitting to emptiness was a betrayal of life itself. But perhaps the void isn't our enemy. Perhaps it's our origin – and our companion.

Nothingness isn't negative. Not entirely positive, either. It simply is. It's a blank page. An open field. The pause before the music begins. Yes, it's unsettling – it demands that we stop pretending. It forces us to confront the artificial scaffolding we build around our lives: the labels, the goals, the desires. But if we stand in the void and don't flinch, if we resist the instinct to fill it with distraction – with noise – something happens.

We begin to hear ourselves. Not the version of ourselves that seems to be correct, not the one that has been sculpted for approval, but the raw unadorned presence of being. To live authentically isn't to escape the void, to escape nothingness. It's to acknowledge it. To make peace with the truth that nothing is promised, that meaning isn't handed down – it's made, moment by moment, in how we sit with silence.

Some days I'll still scroll, still talk too much, still fill the space with clutter. But occasionally, I'll let myself fall. And when I do, I realize I'm not falling into darkness. I'm falling into clarity.

And it's not exactly nothing.

It's the start of everything.