The sin of innocent pride

“At a certain point on his path the absurd man is tempted. History is not lacking in either religions or prophets, even without gods. He is asked to leap. All he can reply is that he doesn’t fully understand, that it is not obvious. Indeed he does not want to do anything but what he fully understands. He is assured that this is the sin of pride, but he does not understand the notion of sin; that perhaps hell is in store, but he has not enough imagination to visualize that strange future; that he is losing immortal life, but that seems to him an idle consideration. An attempt is made to get him to admit his guilt. He feels innocent. To tell the truth, that is all he feels — his irreparable innocence. This is what allows him everything. Hence, what he demands of himself is to live solely with what he knows, to accommodate himself to what is, and to bring in nothing that is not certain. He is told that nothing is. But this at least is a certainty. And it is with this that he is concerned: he wants to find out if it is possible to live without appeal.”

-The Myth Of Sisyphus, Albert Camus.

Admitting the absurdity of life

For years now, I have tried to discern a clear path for me. A purpose of life, so to speak. However, I have reached the definite conclusion that there is none! Of course I am still open to suggestions and objections and if I find a rational, otherwise view point, I shall abandon mine. But till that moment, I hold that life is a purposeless, hopeless, futile mode of our existences. And I sincerely believe that most of us, deep down in our hearts, are well aware of this absurdity that plagues our lives. Yet most of us can’t go for the point blank truth and wish to guise it in a thousand guises, weary that the very admission may take away all hope to live on. We simply refuse to admit the fact that we are an outcome of evolutionary process and that we have no noble, exalted cause of being and have no predictable afterlife. Some of those at the other side of the fence may want to throw in some arguments here but to tell you the truth, I am quite tired of all those arguments. I, truly, have gone over them not once but many times and in fact, I myself have been the one throwing them from that side of the fence once. But well, I can’t take it any longer. However, any fresh line of thought would be very welcome.

To be very candid, I think that the best thing about life is this very purposeless and we ought to cherish every moment we have. I admit Camus’ ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ is very inspiring in that it very neatly brings out the naked, maybe ugly for some, truth about life. You know that there’s no point in existing and yet you enjoy every second of this absurd existence and utilize it to its fullest. You push the stone to the top, knowing it will roll down to the bottom nonetheless, knowing that the curse is eternal, knowing that nothing lies beyond or before and yet you do it. Does it not give you a certain sense of defiance, of standing up in face of all despair and refusing to give up? Of enjoying life and extracting joy from the tiniest bits, letting the journey itself transform into the destiny for you. Like I’ve often said before, sometimes maybe the journey is worth more than whither it leads to. And yet, I now believe, sometimes perhaps the journey itself is all. Sometimes, there’s nothing beyond the journey and as it consumes you, you get the sense of fulfillment not from the accomplishment of the feat but from the thought of being on the path, from the sense of moving on nonetheless, come what may.
Jack London once said, “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” And I believe in saying so, he summed up the entire enterprise of life.

Life is simply to live every moment to its fullest and letting the passion of being consume the very being. It’s about spending the time we have preciously and meaningfully. My lack of belief in a purpose, thus, shall not be mistaken to be an alibi to do nothing or be worthless. Nay, it’s quite the contrary. I believe the lack of a pre-fixed path lets you go for the one as described by Jack London. It permits you the space pre-requisite for the intellectual abilities to develop and bear fruition and reveal newer insights and thus add something meaningful to the collective human wisdom. This liberation from the many self-imposed cages is what lets the spirit soar high and to such heights as have yet been unknown. To me, that is what adds beauty to an otherwise incidental, worthless life. And that’s what makes it worth living to me.