Nothing is the Meaning Of Life

(Author’s Note: I really try to hit hard on the symbols and the idea of nothingness.  Sometimes you may feel a bit at a loss for words because just the idea of nothingness is so difficult to explain.  Impossible in any language to entirely understand.)

Every night people laid out their outfit for the next day, and then tucked their children in bed.  The old man sat alone in a café.  Children had a cup of milk and the parents a half glass of wine.  The old man screamed for more Brandy.  Everybody was moving on in their lives greeted by the morning sun and cradled to bed by the moonlight.  Yet, here in this well lighted place, a lonely man sat still in a booth.  This man was an insignificant speck in a sea of nothingness.

Unlike the younger waiter who flies through life happily and sees no reason to be despaired, the older waiter and old man are extremely overwhelmed with the idea of nothingness.  Although the idea itself of nothingness seems  simple, it’s so complex that people need a light to get them through the night.  There was no one waiting for them back home, nowhere to go, and nothing to go back to.  That café was the only place that may have saved them from nothing.  There was nothing to turn to for meaning.

When the older waiter recites the prayers, “Our nada who art in nada” he accomplished wiping out the idea of heaven and God in less than a sentence.  This shows how people may turn to religion for purpose, but in time find nothing there.  We learned that the old man had money, but that did not cure his despair.  Also he had a wife, but she has either died or divorced.  When he finally got to his brink he attempted suicide to end the nothingness for good.  The old waiter and the old man both can only subdue this monstrosity by waiting out the night in a well lit café.  This is a daily routine they can control unlike the nothingness that has taken up their life.

   In the very last part of this passage Hemingway repeated “it” and “that” quite often.  We never clarify what this may mean, but we find what the older waiter is trying to explain something that may be beyond what English, Chinese, Dutch, and every other language in the world can describe.  This thing bringing dread upon him is massive, possibly infinite.  Perhaps….the meaning of life.  Night becomes a dangerous, empty place for all of those who try to consider it.  Only that café provides a hiding place from their darkest nightmares and their deepest thoughts.