Emptiness

Absurdism – That’s the word Albert Camus gave to the deep dissatisfaction we have with our lives at times.

The feeling of there being no meaning in anything we do, whether we try to acquire more wealth, relationships, mental peace or anything else. There just isn’t any meaning to that all this, as all is fleeting and won’t remain before something or other comes and takes all these away from us.

If nothing, there is a strong sense of our death in our minds that keeps bringing these thoughts on surface time and again. Camus surely was onto a deeper crisis than most of the humans encounter in our life time.

He concludes the myth of siliphyus by saying the fate is such and one should enjoy the freedom and passion that this absurdism brings in our lives. The freedom is something surely worth considering and appreciating deeply for. Since if there was a fixed meaning in life, imagine how mechanical or even machinery the life would be. We all would have say a meaning or purpose to say earn so much money and everyone would be done after that. No freedom to do anything else one may want to do or pursue.

So the state of no meaning gives us a strong freedom to decide whatever meaning we want to associate to our time here. We may be passionate about art, sports, wealth, business, spirituality totally up to us to decide and associate whatever meaning we want. Such level of freedom is remote, if available at all, in all our aspects of life. Possibly that’s one of the reason to be given this higher level freedom.

Now one may argue, for humans who are struggling to make their ends meet, this doesn’t apply as they are inherently at disadvantage and don’t really have the freedom to do whatever they like. Actually this also holds true to some extent to most of us, as we need to make a living and take care of our future, physically and emotionally.

When I think deeper on it, the idea of freedom is all about satisfying our own minds. Since that’s where the problem of meaning is. Our bodies don’t complain us and say since there is no meaning we won’t go to work today. Our mind does. Even the simplest idea that possibly making our ends meet is the meaning or purpose of life. Maybe that would give people some clarity on what it is.