The Myth of Sisyphus

“The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays” by Albert Camus is a deeply intellectual exercise in finding meaning in the nothingness and beauty that surrounds us. Camus never shied away from facing the hardest facts of life and wrestling with the anxiety of that scale. What’s left is an all-consuming awe of life and rootedness in the present. There is freedom in that release.

The principal conversation in this collection is Camus’ argument for the absurdity of suicide in a world that pushes us to the brink. He characterizes suicide as a false sense of agency that allows us to confront the problems of life but also removes all our other agency. In this way, man is perpetually searching for peace, and suicide is a false sense of one. The whole piece reads as a measure of existentialism against the hollowness of certain aspects of reality.

The rest of the collection reads as a painful accounting of the state of the conflict between intellectualism, spirituality, and morality that consumed Camus. For me, Camus has always argued that to love is to rebel against that absurdity of modernity and find meaning in the nothingness and vastness at the same time. This collection reads better than a memoir in that it holds the author’s truest ideas without a retelling of all aspects of their life; whether they’re fictionalized or actual. It’s also a great snapshot of the times Camus lived in.

Rebel against existence and pursue your happy

Need to reread this book I still don’t understand