A feeling on the road: passing anonymously through other people’s ordinary daily lives. Nobody knows your name, your job, your debts, your plans. Nothing is expected of you. You are unimportant — completely, blissfully unimportant — in the most meaningful, good way.
There is a moment on the road — a gas station in a town you will never see again — when it washes over you.
Nobody there knows your name. Nobody knows your story, your job, your debts, your plans. Nothing is expected of you. For that minute you are not a father, not a CFO, not a story at all.
People hear nothingness as bleak. It’s the opposite. My questions never switch off — at work, at midnight, at 2 a.m., the audit runs. But the audit stops when the auditor does. In that nothingness, there is no auditor.
And it’s not that my story is small next to billions of stories. It’s quieter than math. For a minute, there is no story.
I’m lucky to be able to access it. Not everyone gets that minute.
Unimportant Nothingness is a book in progress by Phuc Nguyen — written slowly, in the margins of a working life. Leave an email and you’ll hear from it when there’s something worth sending. Rarely, and only then.
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