Here you are, somehow either through the combination of tragic events in which you felt the harsh stabbing of the truth of life bleed you out into a melancholy or the sudden realisation of the meaninglessness of your world in the indifference that universe reflects upon humanity, you've decided to willingly climb the structure of a building and let the entirety of your existence smack into a sidewalk.
You know all the cliches. "You have a life worth living!" Well, okay, but then why is my life's purpose reserved to the cruelty of chaotic existence? "We care about you and love you!" Well, I'm sure there must be some honesty behind this statement, but why has this been brought to my attention now and not the moments preceding the one in which I was about to leave your life?
It makes sense to end it, right? Once an individual spends a good amount of time trying to find some objective purpose of being here, they end up pretty disappointed by their findings.
The world makes no sense: you're brought up under the assumption that the bad will get what they truly deserve and the good will be rewarded for their deeds.
Then why do horrible things happen? And why, when late at night you ask the cosmos "Why do these things happen?"; "Why does anything happen?", are you met with absolute silence? No one cares and why should you? Why should you live?
You take one breath and just as you're about to let go, "Arritêz!"("stop!"), a man grabs your arm and greets you with a warm smile. Stench of 1940s French cigarettes is the first thing to greet your perception of Albert Camus, one of the most famous novelists of the 20th century.
"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." -Albert Camus
Camus loved life. He loved soccer, he loved women, the more the merrier, and he loved, loved, loved art.
"If the world were clear, art would not exist." -Albert Camus
Okay then, Camus, are you gonna teach me some type of hippie crap? Are you gonna convert me to our lord and saviour?
No!
You see, Camus may be one of the best characters in history to agree with you on this perceived utter meaninglessness of the world. Camus even has a name for this. Not necessarily the meaningless of the world itself, but when people perceive it.
Absurdity,
he calls it.
Camus believes that we live in an absurd world because of our human tendency to try to search for reason, truth and some type of meaning. We set systems to determine these truths through religion and even philosophy itself, but they never seem to completely work out simply because of the way the world works.
The way reality functions isn't under these truths.
If the world wasn't absurd then no innocent people would die. People that are honest and work hard would be rewarded, your very healthy and young dog wouldn't suddenly grow a tumor and die, but we live in an absurd world and these things do happen.
"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth." -Albert Camus
Part of the thing that's such a bummer about this absurdity is how frustrated we get about all this chaos and unjust faith. We try to make sense of the world when the world doesn't appear to have any sense at all. Then we feel defeated and crumble under the weight of all this hopeless suffering.
This realisation isn't necessarily the worst thing that could happen. In fact, it is the beginning of one of the truest ways to live. Camus states that nothing becomes a tragedy until the hero is conscious of their circumstances.
"Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world." -Albert Camus
