When Nothing Happens, and When Everything Does

Reflecting on Waiting, and the Will to Carry On

Author's Note: I usually post on weekends, but this past one was so busy I didn't get a chance to do so. Since this post is partly about when everything happens, I thought it was an appropriate one to go with as it's definitely what I experienced this past weekend. - RA

Paulo Coelho, one of my favorite authors, once wrote, “Life has a way of testing a person’s will – either by having nothing happen at all, or by having everything happen at once.” Like much of his writing, it’s deceptively simple. A single sentence that manages to articulate what entire seasons of life feel like.

In the Jesuit tradition I was raised with, we’re taught to look for God not in the abstract, but in the concrete stuff of our lives: silence, uncertainty, disappointment, exhilaration. This quote offers a framework for naming two of life’s great spiritual tests—the barren stretches where nothing seems to move, and the overwhelming surges when everything breaks loose.

The Test of Nothing

There are few trials more quietly brutal than being ready to move forward and having nowhere to go. Think of all the people right now who are out of work, who refresh their inboxes daily waiting for a job offer or interview request that never comes. Or those holding their breath after a medical scan, suspended in that anxious limbo between question and answer. Or the artist between ideas, the parent waiting on a child’s return, the lover left in the ambiguity of “maybe.”

This is the test of stillness. Nothing is visibly happening, and yet so much is churning beneath the surface. In Ignatian spirituality, this might be called a period of desolation—not in the sense of punishment, but in the sense of a spiritual winter. A time when God feels distant, consolation is elusive, and the temptation is to numb ourselves with distractions or despair. But the wisdom of the Jesuits is to stay awake in these moments, to ask not “Why is nothing happening?” but “What is this quiet trying to teach me?”

The Test of Everything

Then there are those seasons when life explodes. Work deadlines stack up, crises erupt at home, friends need you, your body gives out, and grief or joy or responsibility (or all three) arrive all at once. I’ve lived these stretches too, when I could barely keep my head above water, pulled in so many directions I began to forget what center felt like.

In moments like those, discernment becomes an act of survival. The Jesuits talk about the magis—the “more” that matters most. Not more in the sense of ambition or excess, but more in the sense of depth. What am I being called to say yes to, even if it means saying no to something good? What will bring the greatest love, integrity, and service—not just activity?

These aren't just time management questions. They’re spiritual ones.

Will, Surrender, and Accompaniment

Whether in drought or deluge, Coelho’s insight reminds us: our will is not shaped only by what we choose, but by how we endure what we can’t control. Jesuit formation teaches us not to romanticize suffering, but to walk with it—acompañar, as they say in Spanish. To accompany one another through the unbearable waiting or the overstretched chaos, reminding each other that we are not alone.

Maybe you’re in a season of silence right now, wondering if anything will ever move again. Or maybe you’re drowning in motion, with no space to catch your breath. Either way, your will is being shaped. And beneath it all, if you pay attention, there may be a quiet grace working in the background, waiting to be named.