The Direction of Heart and Mind

Albert Camus is absurd.

Okay, that’s not really a fair assessment. I didn’t know Albert Camus. He died before I was born. Even if he were alive today, in the Venn Diagram of the total population, I doubt Mr. Camus and I would know each other.

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, journalist, and is often recognized as the father of absurdism.

Absurdism is a thought discipline that claims the universe is irrational and meaningless. Searching for meaning, it states, leads people into conflict with the world.

According to Wikipedia, “This conflict can be between rational man and an irrational universe, between intention and outcome, or between subjective assessment and objective worth, but the precise definition of the term is disputed. Absurdism claims that existence as a whole is absurd.”

In “They Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus writes:

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.

Let’s continue down this rabbit hole for just a moment before we break from absurdity.

Camus argues that individuals can find meaning and purpose in the face of the absurdity of existence. This comes through recognition of their own autonomy exercised to defy the absurd. He maintains that rebellion against the absurd looks like embracing life’s challenges and creating meaning through acts of “revolt, freedom, and passion.”

He concludes that even in the face of an indifferent universe, individuals can live in a dignified and authentic way by embracing the absurdity of existence and finding joy in the struggle itself.

In part, the philosophy of absurdism makes sense. At present, the world’s population is estimated just north of 8 billion people. That means I represent approximately 0.0000000125% of the population. Statistically, I am insignificant. Absurdism agrees with me.

This is the point where absurdism and I disagree. Indifference implies a kind of consciousness or ability that the universe has to choose beyond the arbitrary. I scored fairly well on my astronomy finals in college but won’t pretend to understand even a tiny fraction of how the cosmos operate. So, I’ll make an uneducated assertion here: I don’t think the universe is capable of indifference. To say the universe is indifferent is to anthropomorphize it.

All of a sudden, I find myself at a familiar crossroads, and I’m not alone. This is the place of big, existential questions. I can stand here, staring into the void, and believe that all of this is a random, cosmological accident that just happened in an indifferent universe or I can attribute some meaning to it all.

As a child, I was frightened by the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. Lest I get caught up in a childhood phobia, let’s step away from the cosmos and bring things a lot closer to home.

I agree with absurdism’s assertion that I can embrace life’s challenges, and we don’t even need the universe to be arbitrary or indifferent to do it.

We select some of life’s challenges such as the pursuit of a particular career or hobby. Sometimes, chance gives us a challenge such as a health concern not apparently related to lifestyle or circumstance.

How we face those challenges is, in large measure, how our character is defined. A friend once commented that growth occurs based on the “direction of our heart and mind rather than the actual activity.”

That’s a great concept; one that rings true. We will all face innumerable challenges in life, some of which we will work diligently to overcome and some we will ignore.

Becoming a good artist is a challenge I’ve chosen not to tackle. If I were to tackle that challenge, it may take more years than I have remaining for me to become even adequate. That said, I can still sit down with my youngest son at regular intervals and have drawing contests which my wife judges for us. We’re both pretty lousy artists, but it’s an activity we enjoy doing together.

If you noticed, there are two challenges in that example: one to become a good artist and one to spend quality time with my family. I can successfully ignore the former yet succeed at the latter. The activity doesn’t matter at all, but where my heart and mind are does.

I’m a firm believer in the purpose of life even if it’s merely to serve as a warning to others of how not to do it. Alright, I’m joking (kind of). Sometimes, we get so caught up in the minutiae of life that we lose our sense of wonder. That can be especially true when we have to fight desperately to meet our most basic needs.

With deliberate effort we can, as John P. Weiss put it, “slowly craft more meaning, purpose, and serenity into our days.” We can do that amidst the existential uncertainty we face by carving out moments of meaning, purpose, and peace however small they might be.