Opposite Day

As a child I noticed my body always seemed to do the opposite of what I wanted it to. In a hot room, I wanted cool down, but only got hotter and began sweating. I was away from home not wanting to use a foreign toilet, my stomach immediately started grumbling
I have heard Rabbis, scholars, and philosophers alike claim the ultimate attempt a person can make is no attempt at all. To be content knowing you are simply a particle floating around bumping into other particles. By conceding you are nothing, you find solace in everything. I believe some refer to this approach as living in the moment.
For Halloween this year I was nothing. Well, nothing in particular. I wore a basketball jersey on which I had altered the lettering, I spray painted some pants gold, and I wore gold chains and a baseball cap. When people asked me what I was, I just said. “You don’t have to be anything for Halloween, you can just dress up in a crazy combination of things, and that’s what you are.”
Out of costume, I definitely want to be something, even something famous. I am ambitious, selfish, and productive. I am eager. I exaggerate. I rush through meals thinking about what I can snack on later. In a few heightened moments I have grasped nothingness, but it does not at all describe my current mind state. If nothingness is the ultimate, then what is fame? I paint, I write, I am anxious. I lye awake in bed with ideas running through my head. I pay bills, I show too much excitement in my voice. I drink. I smoke, and again, my body is doing the opposite of what I want it to. The rapper Common Sense said, “A reality I touch, but for me it’s hard to keep.” about his experience losing his nothingness.
When rabbis, scholars, and philosophers are expounding their ideas on nothingness and life and other things they think about they often reference opposites. Poor and rich. Ritcheous and wicked. Truths and false truths. Opposites seal the spectrum on either end and envelop any point lying between, they are natural and necessary, a soothing thought to me because it at least validates my endless frenzied collection of life. I seem to have found a place in the conversation about all knowing peace of mind, as its opposite.
When my girlfriend’s father asked her what I was for Halloween she described my costume, and he said, “Yeah, but what was he?” So I am wrong. You do have to be something for Halloween, something famous. All the days I should fill with nothingness, I am trying far too hard to be something, and the one day set aside to be something, I was nothing, once again, the opposite.