According to Albert Camus, if you search for meaning in this world, you’ll find nothing.
Maybe someone close to you passes away, or your spouse has an affair, or you unexpectedly
lose a limb in a car crash, and you find yourself asking, “why me, why now, and why this way?”
And in return, the world gives you no reply.
All of these events—all of these effects—have a cause.
The world is a place of causes and effects after all.
But there’s no reason, not one we can determine at least, behind these causes and effects.
You’ll never find a clear “why” behind any tragedy.
For Camus, the world is absurd.
It’s just there and it couldn’t care less about us.
The stars don’t shine with a purpose, the galaxies don’t move with a plan in mind,
nor do the planets circle for any other reason besides the laws of physics.
Camus calls this experience The Absurd: a feeling born from the contradiction between
our desire to find meaning in this world and a silent world that has none to give.
And for many people, the feeling of absurdity is unbearable.
They can’t imagine being happy without a meaning in life, so they find a way to escape
The Absurd.
And the most common form of escape is through the forced adoption of meaning.
Whether it’s through a religion, philosophy, or politics, people find something to believe
in and make that the meaning for their own lives.
But for Camus, this makes no sense.
The world has no meaning, so it’s absurd to derive one.
And in addition to that, instead of making you happy, deriving a meaning from life actually
robs you of your intrinsic freedom.
Just imagine the person who joins a religion and now has to act in accordance with the
rules of that religion.
According to Camus, this person has lost the freedom of action.
There are certain actions which they can no longer do if they want to abide by the rules
of that religion.
And the same loss of freedom occurs for someone who adopts a new philosophy or joins a new
political movement.
But the adoption of meaning doesn’t just rob you of freedom, it also dulls your mind.
Because instead of seeing the world as it is, you begin to see it through the distorting
lens of your new ideology.
Through the lens of religion, everything get evaluated as sin or not sin.
Through the lens of philosophy, everything becomes virtue or vice.
Through the lens of politics, everything becomes oppressor and oppressed.
So how do we deal with The Absurd if we don’t want to escape it through the forced adoption
of meaning.
For Camus, happiness doesn’t lie in /the discovery/ of a meaning, but rather /the search/
for a meaning.
Finding an answer is not as important as living the question.
And Camus calls the commitment to keep searching for a meaning, even though none exists, revolt.
Revolt is the path to freedom, passion, and happiness.
For Camus, the human condition is most comparable to The Myth of Sisyphus.
Sisyphus was condemned by the Greek gods to an eternal punishment.
He must roll a boulder up a mountain only to watch it fall back down, over and over
again, for all eternity.
This is Sisyphus’ imprisonment and punishment: eternally, fruitless labor.
And like Sisyphus, we’re condemned to work without reward.
We’re prisoners, punished with the task of seeking meaning in a world that has none
to give.
But I think Camus’ genius lies in this insight: “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted
by scorn.”
We can look up at the gods and say, “no, this isn’t my punishment.
I acknowledge and accept my fate.
I want it this way.
I want to keep searching even though I know that search will amount to nothing.
I enjoy searching.
I don’t need to find something.
Searching is enough for me.”
And in this way, our punishment ceases to be a punishment.
We spit in the face of our captors.
If I throw you in prison with the hopes of punishing you, but you sincerely desire to
be in that prison, then I’ve failed in punishing you.
You’ve beat me.
And similarly, by continuing our relentless search for meaning, we overcome the gods and
our fates.
By enjoying the search itself, we revolt.
Through our revolt, we become free.
No longer restricted or bound by some pre-packaged ideology—by some forced adoption of meaning–we
become free to fully experience life the way we want.
We’re free to act in the way we wish, and through this freedom, we become passionate
and alive.
We don’t need a meaning to be happy in life, and in fact, a meaning often just gets in
the way of happiness and freedom.
It limits your action and dulls your mind.
/The discovery/ of meaning isn’t as important as /the search/ for meaning.
By continuing to search, you revolt against the gods.
You turn your punishment into your reward, and by doing so, you overcome it.
You become free to search for meaning wherever you like and experience the fullness of life,
and by doing so, you become alive.
The search is enough, or as Camus put it, “the struggle itself toward the heights
is enough to fill a man’s heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”