Chapter 7: When Life Feels Absurd

A Tuesday Morning on the Tram

Oskar is thirty-eight and works as an inspector of buildings for the local council. Every weekday, he takes the same tram at seven forty, sits in roughly the same seat and watches the same streets pass by the window. He arrives at the office at eight fifteen, drinks a coffee, reads his emails and goes out to inspect buildings until lunch. In the afternoon, he writes reports. At five thirty, he takes the tram home, eats dinner, watches something, goes to bed. Then it begins again.

He has done this for eleven years, and it has never troubled him. But one Tuesday morning in late autumn, something strange happens. As the tram pulls away from his stop, he looks at the other passengers, all sitting quietly, looking at their phones or out of the window, and a single word appears in his mind: why? Why are we all doing this? Why do I get up every morning, take this tram, inspect these buildings, come home, sleep and do it again? What is it all for?

The question is not dramatic. Nothing bad has happened. He is not unhappy with his job or his life. But the question, once it has appeared, will not go away. All day, as he inspects a school roof and writes a report about a broken fire door, he feels oddly separate from what he is doing, as if he were watching himself from the outside. The routine that has always felt natural suddenly feels strange, almost theatrical. It is as if the scenery of his life has been revealed as painted cardboard.

Oskar's Tuesday morning is very close to a scene described in a book written more than eighty years ago by Albert Camus. Camus called the feeling behind it the absurd, and he built a whole philosophy around the question of how to live once we have felt it. This chapter explores that philosophy. Because Camus's book begins with a very serious question about whether life is worth living, I will also speak about that question carefully, and with a clear word about help.

When the Scenery Falls Down

In 1942, during the Second World War, Camus published an essay called The Myth of Sisyphus. In it, he tried to think clearly about what happens when a person realizes that life has no meaning given to it from outside, and what that person should then do.

Early in the essay, Camus describes how this realization often begins, not with a philosophical argument, but with a feeling in the middle of ordinary life. In my own words: most of us live by a routine of journeys, working hours, meals and sleep, repeated through the week with hardly any change. Most of the time, we follow it without question. Then, on some quite ordinary day, we suddenly ask why we are doing all this, and we feel a strange tiredness that is also a kind of astonishment. Camus likens this moment to a performance in a theatre when the painted scenery falls down and the bare stage is suddenly visible.

Camus suggested that this moment of weariness is important. It is the moment when consciousness wakes up. Before, we were living almost automatically. Now we are aware. The awakening can lead in different directions: back to the routine, as if nothing had happened, or forward to a new way of living. But the moment itself, Camus believed, is the beginning of everything that matters in his philosophy.

Camus described other moments in which the absurd can appear: when the world suddenly seems strange and unfamiliar, as if we were seeing a landscape for the first time and it did not care about us at all; when we see a person through the glass of a telephone box, gesturing and talking, and their movements seem meaningless because we cannot hear the words; when we catch sight of ourselves in a mirror and feel, for a moment, like a stranger. These experiences are common, and many people have had something like them. Camus took them seriously as clues to our real situation.

What Camus Meant by the Absurd

The word "absurd" in everyday language often means ridiculous or silly. Camus used it in a more precise sense. For him, the absurd was not simply a feature of the world, and not simply a feature of human beings. It was a relationship between the two.

On one side, there is the human being, who longs for meaning, order, clarity and understanding. We want to know why we are here, what our lives are for, why things happen as they do. We want the world to make sense. On the other side, there is the world, which does not answer. It simply is. The stars do not explain themselves. The rain does not tell us why it falls. Illness, accidents and death come without reasons that satisfy us. Put in my own words, Camus's idea is that the absurd arises when our human longing for meaning runs up against a world that stays silent and gives no reasons.

The absurd, then, is a kind of mismatch, a gap between what we long for and what we find. It is not that life is worthless or that nothing matters. It is that our deep wish for a final, complete meaning meets a universe that does not provide one.

Camus insisted on honesty about this gap. He did not want to deny it, either by pretending that the world does provide a final meaning, or by pretending that we do not really long for one. Both sides of the gap are real. The absurd is what we feel when we hold them together, with open eyes.

Some readers find it helpful to think of the absurd as a kind of honesty test. Many of the comforting stories we tell ourselves about life, such as that everything happens for a reason, that good people are always rewarded or that hard work always pays off, can be tested against our actual experience. Sometimes they hold. Often they do not. Camus asked his readers not to cling to such stories when they fail, but to look at what is actually there and to build a life on that firmer ground.

It is important to notice that Camus did not believe the absurd leads to despair. Quite the opposite. His whole essay is an argument for how to live fully and joyfully in the face of the absurd. But to get there, he had to begin with the hardest question.

Camus's Hard Opening Question

The Myth of Sisyphus begins with a famous and startling claim. Camus sets aside the usual puzzles of philosophy and argues, in substance, that before any of them comes a more urgent matter: whether life is worth living at all.

This is a very serious question, and I want to approach it carefully. Camus was asking it as a philosopher: if life has no meaning given from outside, does it follow that life is not worth living? Should the realization of the absurd lead a person to give up on life? His answer, after many pages of careful thought, was a clear and firm no. He argued that ending one's life is not a solution to the absurd, but a way of escaping it, of surrendering. The absurd requires a living person to face it. To live, fully aware of the absurd, is what Camus called revolt, and it was the heart of his philosophy.

I also want to speak directly to any reader for whom this question is not only philosophical. If you are going through a time when life feels unbearable, or if you have thoughts of ending your life, please know that you are not alone and that help is available right now. Contact a crisis helpline, a doctor or someone you trust. If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. Many people who once felt this way have found, with support, that their feelings changed and that life became worth living again. Reaching out is not a weakness. It is the first act of the revolt Camus described: the choice to stay and face life.

For most readers, Camus's question will be thought-provoking rather than personal. But it is worth taking it seriously in a gentle way, because it forces a deeper question: if life is worth living even without a meaning handed to us, then what makes it so? Camus's answer to that question is what the rest of his essay, and the rest of this chapter, is about.

Three Ways to Respond

Camus considered several ways in which people respond to the absurd. It can be helpful to see them side by side.

The first is to escape from life itself. As we have seen, Camus rejected this firmly. In his view, giving up on life does not resolve the absurd. It only takes away the person who could face it. The absurd demands a living witness.

The second is what Camus called, with deliberate sharpness, philosophical suicide. By this he did not mean ending one's life. He meant escaping the absurd by leaping into a belief that removes the gap, for example by deciding that, although the world seems silent, there must be a hidden meaning that will one day make everything clear. Camus criticized several thinkers for doing this, including Kierkegaard, whose leap into religious faith Camus saw as a way of abandoning the clear-eyed honesty that the absurd requires. Many readers, including religious readers, disagree with Camus here, and Kierkegaard himself would have described his faith very differently. But Camus's point was that he wanted to stay with the gap rather than cover it over.

The third response, the one Camus himself chose, he called revolt. To revolt, in his sense, is to live with full awareness of the absurd, refusing both to give up on life and to escape into false hope. It is to keep the gap open, to look at it clearly and to say: I will live anyway, and I will live fully. Revolt is not anger or violence. It is a kind of defiant faithfulness to life, in spite of everything.

It may help to put this in ordinary terms. When Oskar's question "why?" appears on the tram, he has several options. He could push the question away and return to the routine, pretending nothing happened. He could reach for a ready-made answer that settles the question once and for all. Or he could let the question remain, and ask himself how to live with open eyes, knowing that no final answer is coming, but choosing to live his days with awareness, honesty and passion. Camus would encourage the third.

Revolt, Freedom and Passion

Camus drew three consequences from the absurd: revolt, freedom and passion. Each of them can be translated into ordinary life.

Revolt, as we have seen, is the decision to live with full awareness, without giving up and without false comfort. In daily life, it might mean refusing to sleepwalk through our routines, refusing to pretend that everything makes perfect sense and refusing to let the lack of a final meaning stop us from living fully.

Freedom, for Camus, came from letting go of the idea that our lives must serve some hidden, ultimate purpose. If there is no final plan, then we are free from the pressure to fit our lives into one. We can live without constantly asking whether our actions are serving a grand destiny. Camus used the image of a condemned prisoner, for whom all concern about the future has fallen away, as one illustration of this strange freedom. This can sound bleak, but Camus meant it as a liberation: we are free to live this life, here, now, on its own terms.

Passion, finally, meant living as fully and intensely as possible. If there is no final meaning that makes some experiences more important than others in the eyes of the universe, then what matters is the richness of our experience: being fully alive, aware and engaged. Camus himself loved the sea, the sun, swimming, football, friendship, theatre and conversation. His writing is full of a sensual joy in the physical world. Passion, for him, was not frantic pleasure-seeking, but a deep, conscious love of life.

Together, revolt, freedom and passion describe a way of living that is honest about the absurd and yet full of energy. Camus's philosophy is often called a philosophy of the absurd, but it might better be called a philosophy of lucid joy: joy that comes not from illusions but from seeing clearly and choosing to live anyway.

The Absurd in Small Moments

Camus wrote about the absurd as a large philosophical idea, but it also shows up in small, everyday moments. Recognizing these moments can make the idea feel less abstract, and sometimes even funny.

The absurd appears when we spend an hour carefully preparing a meal that is eaten in five minutes. When we clean a house that will be dirty again tomorrow. When we stand in a long queue to fill in a form that nobody will read. When we argue passionately about something that, a year later, we cannot even remember. When we look at old photographs of ourselves and realize how seriously we took things that now seem small.

These moments can provoke a laugh, a sigh or a shrug. Camus's insight suggests that we need not let them make us cynical. We can see the absurdity and still choose to care. The meal was eaten quickly, but it was eaten together, and the people enjoyed it. The house will be dirty again, but today it is clean, and that is good. Humour, in fact, is one of the healthiest responses to the absurd. It allows us to see clearly without despair.

There is also a quiet solidarity in noticing the absurd together. When two colleagues roll their eyes and laugh at a pointless meeting, or when friends share stories of absurd bureaucracy, something human passes between them. They are acknowledging, without saying it directly, that the world does not always make sense and that they are in it together. Camus valued this kind of shared, honest laughter. It does not solve the absurd. It makes it lighter to carry.

Some readers may notice a connection here with an idea found in many spiritual and practical traditions: that ordinary tasks done with full attention, and small daily acts, can be meaningful in themselves. Camus came to his view from a very different starting point, but he would have agreed that the richness of life is found in living it, not in a hidden purpose behind it.

Four Lives and the Absurd

Wen is fifty and works as an accountant in a busy firm. Last year, a close friend of the same age died suddenly of a heart attack. Since then, Wen has felt the absurd strongly: his friend's death made no sense, and the rush of work now seems strange and hollow. For months, he felt numb. Then, slowly, something changed. He started leaving the office on time, walking home through the park instead of taking the bus and calling his old friends more often. He did not find a reason for his friend's death. But he decided, as he put it, "to live as if I knew how short it is". He still feels the absurd. He also feels more alive than he has in years.

Thabo is nineteen and has just finished school. Everyone expected him to go straight to university, but he feels that he does not know why he should study anything. "What is the point?" he asks his older sister. She does not try to give him the point. Instead, she says: "Maybe there is no big point. So what would you like to do with this year, just because it is your life?" Thabo decides to take a year working at a community garden and travelling cheaply with friends. During that year, he discovers a strong interest in plants and soil. He applies to study agriculture, not because someone told him it was the point of his life, but because he wants to.

Rosalind is seventy-three and has spent her retirement volunteering at a hospice, sitting with people near the end of their lives. She has seen many deaths, and she has no illusions that they always make sense. Yet she continues, week after week, holding hands, listening, making tea. When a young volunteer asks her how she can bear it, Rosalind says: "I do not know what it all means. But I know that, right now, this person is not alone. That is enough for today." Without having read Camus, she has found her own form of revolt.

Oskar, from the beginning of this chapter, does not quit his job or make dramatic changes. But he stops sleepwalking. On the tram, he looks out of the window and actually sees the streets. He begins to notice which buildings he has helped make safer, and he starts to feel a quiet satisfaction in that. He takes up swimming again, something he loved as a boy, and goes to the pool twice a week. The question "why?" still visits him sometimes. Now, instead of frightening him, it reminds him to pay attention to his life.

Wen, Thabo, Rosalind and Oskar each met the absurd: in a friend's death, in a young person's doubt, in the presence of dying people and in a Tuesday morning tram. None of them found a final answer. Each of them, in their own way, chose to live awake to it, and found that life, without a given meaning, could still be full.

Practical Steps

First, welcome the "why?". When the question of meaning appears in the middle of ordinary life, do not push it away immediately. Let it wake you up. It may be the beginning of living more consciously.

Second, notice escapes. Watch for the ways you might escape the question: returning to routine without thought, grabbing quick answers or distracting yourself constantly. Choose instead to keep your eyes open.

Third, find your passions. Ask what makes you feel most fully alive: a place, an activity, a kind of work, a kind of company. Make more room for these in your life.

Fourth, use humour. When you notice small absurdities in daily life, allow yourself to laugh. Humour can help you see clearly without falling into cynicism.

Fifth, live as if you knew how short it is. Like Wen, let awareness of life's limits sharpen your attention to what matters now: people, experiences, honest work, beauty.

Sixth, ask for help when it is too heavy. If the sense that nothing matters grows heavy and will not lift, or if thoughts of ending your life come, reach out today: to a doctor, a helpline, someone you trust or, in an emergency, your local emergency services. You do not have to face it alone.

A Short Exercise: The Silence and Your Answer

This exercise takes about twenty minutes. It invites you to look at the absurd honestly and then to write your own response.

Take a page and divide it into two halves. At the top of the left half, write "What I long for". Underneath, write the things you deeply wish life would give you: clear meaning, fairness, certainty, understanding, permanence, whatever it is for you. Be honest.

At the top of the right half, write "What the world gives". Underneath, write what you actually find: uncertainty, change, unexplained loss, silence, and also beauty, love, surprise, moments of joy. Again, be honest. Do not make it all dark or all bright.

Look at the two halves together. The gap between them is what Camus called the absurd. Notice how it feels to see it written down. Some people find it painful. Others find it strangely calming, because it is simply the truth.

Below the two halves, write a heading: "How I will live anyway". Under it, write three to five sentences describing how you choose to live, given this gap. They might be about people you will care for, things you will create, experiences you will seek or ways you will pay attention. These sentences are your own version of Camus's revolt.

Read your sentences aloud, if you can. Keep the page somewhere you can find it on days when the "why?" feels heavy.

Questions People Often Ask

"Is Camus saying that life is meaningless?" Not exactly. He was saying that life has no final meaning given to it from outside, by the universe or by a plan we can know. But he did not conclude that life is not worth living. On the contrary, he argued that we can and should live fully, with awareness, freedom and passion. Many readers find his view not nihilistic but deeply affirming of life.

"I am religious. Is Camus's view an attack on my faith?" Camus did not share religious belief, and he criticized what he saw as escapes into hope. But many religious readers find value in his honesty, his insistence on facing hard questions and his love of life. Some religious thinkers have also written about the experience of God's silence, which has something in common with what Camus describes. You can take what is useful from Camus without accepting all of his conclusions.

"What if I feel the absurd so strongly that I cannot enjoy anything?" Sometimes, a feeling that nothing matters is part of depression, which is a common and treatable health condition, rather than a philosophical insight. If you find that you have lost interest in almost everything, feel hopeless much of the time or have trouble sleeping, eating or functioning, please talk with a doctor or qualified professional. And if thoughts of ending your life appear, please do not wait to ask for help from a crisis line or emergency services.

Chapter Summary

In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus described how the question "why?" can suddenly arise in the middle of a routine life, as if the painted scenery of a theatre had fallen down. He called the feeling behind it the absurd: the clash between our deep longing for meaning and a world that gives no answer. The absurd is not the world alone or the person alone, but the gap between them.

Camus began his essay by asking whether life is worth living, and his answer was a firm no to giving up on life. He also rejected what he called philosophical suicide, escaping into a hope that covers the gap. His own response was revolt: living with open eyes, with freedom and with passion. If the question of whether life is worth living is personal for you, please remember the note earlier in this chapter and reach out to a helpline, a doctor or someone you trust today.

In the next chapter, we look at the image with which Camus ended his essay: Sisyphus, pushing his stone up the mountain, again and again.