As kids, our stock answer to most every question was nothing. What did you do at school today? Nothing. What’s new? Nothing. Then, somewhere on the way to adulthood, we each took a 180-degree turn. We cashed in our nothing for busy.

I’m starting to think that, like youth, the word nothing is wasted on the young. Maybe we should try re-introducing it to our grown-up vernacular. Nothing. I say it a few times and I can feel myself becoming more quiet, decaffeinated. Nothing. Now I’m picturing emptiness, a white blanket, a couple of ducks gliding on a still pond. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. How did we get so far from it?

— Amy Krouse Rosenthal, from An Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Posted on 17 August 2008