On how the idea of nothing changed everything

Zero. It's funny how something that means "nothing" changed absolutely everything.

I've been obsessed with zero lately. But here's what gets me: how do you wrap your head around having nothing of something? It's like the 1960s folk song where Donovan sings about trying to catch the wind - an impossible task of grasping something intangible. Yet this elusive concept of zero, this "nothing," became the foundation of our entire modern world.

The Fear of Nothing

The Greeks, those pioneers of Western thought, couldn't handle it. Zero was too weird, too unsettling—they literally had no symbol for nothing. The Romans, with their practical minds and love of counting soldiers and coins, didn't fare much better. Zero simply didn't compute in their world of conquest and commerce.

But in ancient India, something magical happened. Hindu philosophers didn't see zero as a void to fear—they saw it as a cosmic invitation. To them, zero wasn't empty; it was pregnant with infinite possibility. It was the moment before creation, the breath before the word.

From Nothing Came Everything

This mind-bending idea travelled through the Arab world, where brilliant minds like Al-Khwarizmi (whose name, by the way, dances into the word "algebra") unleashed its power. Zero didn't just change mathematics—it revolutionised how we think about everything. Banking, science, engineering, even our ability to map the cosmos—all of these needed zero to become possible.

Yet here's the irony: in our culture of more, more, more, we're still deeply uncomfortable with zero. We see it as failure, as loss, as something to avoid. Look at how we think about money and success—we're terrified of "having nothing," so we fill our lives with more wealth, more possessions, more distractions.

The Fullness of Empty

But maybe we all need to start being a bit more Zen? Zero isn't nothing—it's the beginning. It's the blank canvas before the masterpiece, the silence before the symphony. In our chaotic, overstuffed world, maybe zero is exactly what we need: the chance to reset, to create, to redefine what truly matters.

Because sometimes, in nothing, we find everything.

If this perspective resonates, watch for my upcoming book "The Conscious Currency" where I explore our relationship with money as both a tool and an energy.