Zero is where the Real Fun starts. There is too much counting everywhere else...

I have recently turned to the poetry to Sufi mystics and the title above comes from a poem by Hafiz. The minute I read the line I felt a strange connect with it. Zero, nothingness, the beginning and the end, that’s where all the fun is. After that, honestly, it’s all maths.

Look at our lives. As kids there were so many new things that we ventured out on with no idea how they should turn out or what we should expect from them. The games we played as children were just that – games. And then, somewhere along the way, the world came in with all its scores and calculations and deciding winners and losers. There was planning and talk of security. And the innocence of doing things just for their own sake, for the intrinsic pleasure they brought to us, was over.

We grew older. In college, subjects were chosen not because of our interest in studying them but for the scope they would hold out for us in the world. Jobs were applied for and careers planned not by what fired our imagination but what would line our pockets best. No wonder, so many of us are disgruntled so often with our lot.

And here, we have this medieval mystic telling us to get rid of our calculating minds and to trust and to not be afraid of the Zero, because that’s where the Real Fun starts. There is too much counting everywhere else.