In this essay, I specifically intend to do just that: reviewing the ways we live with and address nothingness and create something out of nothingness. I build on the analysis offered in the previous essays by focusing on our personal experiences in addressing the challenge of nothingness. I offer a six-step model, moving from a state of waiting, to the states of imagining, anticipating, creating and achieving. I then consider some of the important human outcomes that come with the movement from nothingness to something—especially in a challenging world we confront in the mid-21st Century that is filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, turbulence and contradiction (VUCA-Plus) (Bergquist 2026a).
Waiting
An initial step that we often take when confronting the state of nothingness is to wait for something to emerge. As children, we wait patiently for Christmas day to arrive. Or we wait for our birthday and the accompanying celebration and gifts. As adults, we wait for the coming day when we will be wed, or we wait for the promotion or salary increase that has been promised. Waiting is a big part of our ongoing engagement of both head and heart. A strong argument is to be made that a major sign of maturity is our capacity to forgo immediate pleasure while we wait for a longer-term, bigger benefit. Don Howard (2025, p. 9) even suggests that the process of waiting resides at the head and heart of our contemplation of what we have just been addressing – the nature of existence:
“In many traditions, the universe is said to have been created ex nihilo–“from nothing.” But again, if you look closely, you find a presence lurking: a creator, a will, a mind-something prior. The “nothing” is not really nothing. It may be the absence of material, but it is not the absence of purpose. The divine remains, fully formed, ready to act. There is no true void–only a waiting.” –
Yes, Howard seems to be saying that even the Supreme Creator had to wait, for some reason, before beginning the process of creating the universe. We might even suggest that this waiting continues, as so much of our universe is still being formed. The Big Bang was only a start. We (and our creator) are in the midst of an ongoing, very long-term, waiting for the universe to fully evolve. If nothing else, we certainly can declare that our universe was not created in seven days. How about a billion years of evolution, or an eternally developing evolution. This requires a vast amount of waiting. And a waiting that is likely to continue long after the human species no longer dwells on Planet Earth.
Most importantly, it is worth noting that waiting – especially long-term waiting—tends to hold religious implications. I have mentioned several instances of waiting, and many of them have to do with impending celebrations. There are the secular instances of waiting that have to do with our work in the world; however, we often must wait for the big, long-term benefits by framing them as sacred rather than secular. For those ascribing to most of the Western religions there is the long-term wait for salvation and some heavenly afterlife.
While many Eastern religions are aligned with a cyclical perspective regarding life and afterlife (there being only a return to life in some new form), the Western religions, as I mentioned in a previous essay in this series, are aligned with a linear perspective. A linear perspective leads to the conclusion that there is an end to time regarding our own life on earth and the existence of the universe or at least humankind (the eschaton). With the linear conclusion comes two options (much like the options we face regarding the matter of universal existence). One option is that this is the end for us, in terms of any afterlife or any form of consciousness. The second option is that there is some life after our current life, whether this be a heaven or hell, or some other form of continuing consciousness.
During the years prior to the emergence of the Christian religion, we find many communities in the Mid-east waiting for the eminent coming of the Messiah. The Essene community located in Qumran at the edge of the Dead Sea are notable in this regard (Cross, 1961). The Dead Sea Scrolls, probably prepared by the Essenes, bears direct evidence of this culture of waiting. Among those Jewish people who did not believe that the Messiah had arrived, in the presence of Jesus Christ, there remains a profound culture of waiting. The rituals and theology of the Jewish faith are filled with images of a sacred figure to come who will liberate the Jewish people from bondage (and modern-day discrimination and threat of total annihilation). As vividly described in the scrolls, the forces of good will defeat those of evil.
