The Absurdity of Life
- Vicent Nemeyimana
- March 31, 2017
- Motivation and Inspiration
My friend Ralph Ammer recently published an article that moved me. For those of you who ever read about the Greek story of philosopher Sisyphus, you will not be totally green about this. And this article entirely belongs to self or personal development!
Ralph reviewed interesting texts from the book, The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus (1942). And here is the amazing idea.
According to Camus, our lives become sad or absurd because we are trying to reason out the best ways to successfully live and the world usually does not reason or, say, agree with us and so keeps opposing our desires and wishes to live well and better.
In other words, Our reasoning + The World’s non reasoning=Absurdity of Life.
And now the question is always; how can we overcome the absurdity of life and live happily well?
The answer is simple; we either deny our reasoning and flow with the unreasoning world or dump the reasoning world and flow with our own reasoning. For those who might find difficulty deciphering message from these words, let us make it plain below;
We can avoid sadness or absurdity of Life by eliminating one of the two things that result into this sadness, which are our reasoning (our wishes, plans, and workings of how to make life beautiful and a success one) and the world’s unreasoning (the objections, challenges, difficulties and dangers the world throws at us as we try to negotiate our lives and happiness through)
But the above solution is impossible!
And author Camus Albert calls it “philosophical suicide”
In my opinion and understanding, I think Camus is saying that we cannot possibly deny or eliminate what is real or unavoidable (ie we cannot give up on struggling to make life a better one and also we cannot be able to deny the fact that the world shall always present us with obstacles)
And so he (Camus) suggests a way
What way!
Camus say we can survive the philosophical suicide by attempting the real suicide. What! The real suicide?
Yes, read through these 3 options;
1. Rebellion
Yes, Camus suggests that one of the best ways to deal with absurdity of life is to live in constant rebellion against the opposite forces of the unreasoning world. In the words of my friend Ammer, “Permanent rebellion is the only way to be present in the world”. This does not kill the absurdity, it keeps it in the check; very alive.
The unreasoning world is alive and our reasoning is alive and the forever ongoing antagonism is the life, the reality of life!
2. Freedom
Camus suggests that we should not focus on eternal glory and virtues (maybe I should make it a little bit clear; we should not only focus on eternal) and lose the sight of what we already have now. In other words, our heaven and the success we claim to have which the world is always opposing is actually already here; we need to pause and start living even now.
We can fight to have our way, push in to see our reasoning bring us our wishful results, but when things fail like they will someday, we need to come back and live happily within the means of our endeavours.
3. Passion
Yes, we need to have passion for life. In other words, instead of being disgusted and ungrateful, we need to focus on the small we have and be grateful. In Ammer’s words; “Most importantly we should always have a passion for life, love everything in it and try not to live as good as possible but as much as possible”
I love that!
And so Ralph sums up his review in these words: “An absurd human knows about his mortality and yet doesn’t accept it, knows about the limitation of his reasoning, yet still holds it dear, feels the pleasure and pain of his experiences and yet tries to take in as many as possible”
Talking about philosopher Sisyphus, it is believed that he revolted against gods and was punished for doing that. His punishment, as narrated by Ammer, was to push a boulder up a hill, just to see it roll down again, and keep doing so forever and ever and ever.
It is so surprising to see that author Camus ends up his book with these words; ONE MUST IMAGINE SISYPHUS HAPPY!
And I beg not to distort the story with my explanations but instead still borrow author Camus’ words as cited by Ralph Ammer:
“Sisyphus is the perfect model for us, since he has no illusions about his pointless situation and yet revolts against the circumstances. With every descent of the rock he makes a conscious decision to give it another go. He keeps pushing that rock and recognises that this is what his existence is all about: to be truly alive, to keep pushing”
Don’t you see the whole point of our life struggles?
Few days ago I wrote an article called You Can Only Quit If You Are Sure That Your Life Shall Be Better If You Do. And I ask again; do you see any reason to quit the struggle? That would be acceptance of death, yes, terrible death with regrets.
Actually, I have come to realize and accept that life is about solving challenges, one after the other and yet living fully through the transfers from one obstacle to the other and even during the real fight in the middle of the unreasoning and opposing world.
That is what life is! And the earlier we see it that way, the better we shall find and enjoy the melody that goes along with these hustles!
God bless you so much.
The Complete You Ministry, www.miklahlife.com
Has this article helped you? I mean, have you been inspired? Then share with your other friends and let them get inspires to. Thank you so much.
