Old timers know that the value of nothing is great and they put that knowledge to use.

Interviewers, for example, realize dividends by the judicious application of silence. It reaps confession, rambling self revelations, and other benefits.

Before the advent of electronic ignition, we used a distributor with it’s set or two of “points” which are electrodes. The shaft of the distributor is not circular but has flats and lobes running the length of it. Points consist of a stationary component, and one on a spring that rides the rotating distributor shaft whose flat spots cause one electrode contact point to move away from the other. The lobes cause it to return. Or does it work the opposite? Depends on the orientation of the points to the shaft. That gap between the electrode points, where there is “nothing but air” breaks the conduction of high voltage current (10,000 volts or more) until the point gap is closed again  so the electrical charge can be distributed to the next fire plug in it’s turn.

Restaurants value the effect of empty stomachs on the appreciation and consumption of what they offer to the hungry.

And absence is said to make the tender heart grow fonder.

Me, I noted as a child that the strangest effect followed months of sparse art output: my abilities improved in the wake of the creative starvation.

Scriptures have long touted the need for fasting. A nutrition professor doubted this, saying that there is no benefit in randomly starving one’s self. I, of myself, have tested the fasting process and agree that there is no  benefit to starving one’s self if that were all that is involved. However, it isn’t. There is significant value to the self discipline of fasting for spiritual growth and I don’t deliver that fact as an intermediary between you and a book. I know it to be so.

Art composition class will teach about so called negative space which is the area around a focus subject. A valuable exercise has the artist drawing the negative space rather than the subject, and the artist learns that if done with precision it leads to a view of the object. Often the object is distorted, however. If you draw enough of what the subject isn’t, then the subject emerges.

And anyone who has gone without income may with confidence attest to the power of nothing to motivate.

What is missing can be the most essential part of a situation. I’ve long claimed that ignorance is the most expensive thing I ever owned.

One ultimate plus in anyone’s life is their creative ability, by which I refer to applying themselves  to some talent or labor that makes the lives of others better or more meaningful. Now there is a void worth filling. There are things you bring to the world that none other can. That they are undone until you step in and make them happen is an unrealized capital awaiting you to mint and distribute it which was designed on your behalf. After all, what is the worth of something if there isn’t an actual value in it? Talent applied joins good deeds in the infusion of joy in the world.