I wake to emptiness.

There’s nothing I “have to do” for hours stretching into days. Plenty I’d enjoy doing – I’m not bored – but I must decide, from this endless inventory of opportunities, which to select. I could do this, that or nothing – so which?

But can I do nothing? “Nature,” observed Aristotle, “abhors a vacuum.” If “nothing” is what I’m doing, doesn’t “nothing” become something? This is not a word game. We spend minutes as we do money, expecting a return. And time can’t be recouped. An hour spent is forever gone.

Emptiness is a human concept. It depends on a comparison between two planes of existence – what is and what might be. For dogs, as Henry reminds me, what is is all there is, a brimming present, never a zero. He can’t do other than he is doing now – which is sleeping on my feet. He’d prefer to go out and play – but he knows that happens later in the morning, after I shut my laptop, and before Jane and I eat lunch. He relaxes into the inevitability of existence (nothing’s more relaxing than inevitability).

I have a choice to make – which ramifies into a thousand choices. I want to make the best use of my time, but how to know? Best by whose lights? Best for whom? What if I choose wrong? Isn’t wasting time a sort of criminal negligence? – for all we are given of life is time.

Human nature, too, abhors a vacuum. That’s why we keep busy. Activity feels like purpose. In my childhood home, doing nothing meant you were sick – and if you were sick you were doing something, that is, getting better. (Reading a book except for homework was rated doing nothing. Arranging flowers in a vase was doing something.)

Rich people like to tell you how busy they are, going here and there, seeing this and that. Just hearing about their schedules exhausts – so busy, when do they find time to be!

Emptiness, for me, is a recent experience. Ambition, from my earliest days, kept me busy. Ben Franklin was our American paragon. (“Be ashamed to catch yourself idle.” “Lost time is never found again.” “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” -- and so on – to exasperation.) Reading and writing I accounted work, to justify my indulgence. (“Don’t bother me – I’m busy!”)

Now I have nothing to do, nothing much – no job to go to, few duties to fulfill. I cavil at obligations. Jane asks if I would mind doing something. “I don’t do anything I don’t want to,” I harrumph. “If I do it, it means I want to.”

But what is best to do? How to fulfill the time, not just fill it?

I distrust Reason, a lawyer who can argue backward from any conclusion. Reason can explain why an hour hasn’t been wasted – when you know it has.

I take my marching orders from the emptiness. Which of all I might be doing or saying feels most right? Love is my navigator – do what I love for those I love. But how love makes up my mind I have no idea. I’d say this process was mystical only its result is practical. I am typing these words now and not something else. Neither whim nor calculation conduces to this conclusion, though they participate in the deliberation. How do I know I made the right decision? If my heart nods, so do I.

I used to fear emptiness as an indictment. Now I fear its absence. Emptiness is where I am most alive.