Nothing-ing (Nada-ndo)

R. H. Silveira
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

In a beautiful, random day I went swimming in a lake. I’ll spare you further details to keep it short, but from the one shore I could see the other: It didn’t look very far away, so I swam hard and fast, far onto the other shore, until I slowly realized that I was already too tired to go ahead and reach the other side. When I looked back I also realized that I was too tired to swim all the way back. I realized that the only chance to survive was to float until I recovered my energies, so I laid facing up and tried to fill my lungs with a lot of air — which was hard, because I was very agitated. Breath deep, and keep calm, and breath again… Stay on the surface. Just breath — I thought. Little by little, in each breath I was slowly regaining control of the situation. And only by then I could pay attention to the sky above: It was immense, completely clear and intensely blue, and I felt deeply moved, even to tears, to be able to experience such beauty, maybe for one last time in life. But the moment my lungs were empty I would go down in the water again, so I tried to keep my breath at rest and admire it peacefully. And just be there. Nothing-ing (nada-ndo). Feeling all kinds of deep feelings and sensations, observing them passing through me. Struggling for my life and, through this struggle, learning to keep calm, to breath, through beauty and pain, to pay attention to the simplest things of existence, to the universe in its infinity, to the continuous flow of perception. Maybe that was what life in its entirety was about? There was nothing else to be done then, and even the consciousness about it, which I recall here, was secondary.
That crucial moment I felt ready to die was also the moment I felt ready to live on.
Very often, when I feel like I’m not really living, in my thoughts I get back to that lake for a while, only to be there, breathing.
Nothing-ing.

R. H. Silveira

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Free writer, language lover, natural expat.