You were born in a World War to live another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car accident with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded for writing that “with the sincerity of vision illuminates the problems of the human conscience” – problems such as the art of indifference, happiness as our moral responsibility, and the measure of strength in difficult times.
During World War II, Camus stood passionately on the side of justice; during the Cold War, he tore through the Iron Curtain with all the human power of simple kindness. But when he watched the country burn its future in the fiery political pit, he understood that time, which has no good side and no bad side, is only won or lost on a very small and personal level: a complete existence with personal life, based on the belief that “the true giving of the future is to give everything to the present.”
Camus speaks of this with poetic poignancy in an essay entitled “The Wrong Side and the Right Side,” found in his excellent posthumous collection. Lyrical and Critical Essays (public library).
In a stern rebuke against our modern religion of production, which robs us of our ability to exist, Camus writes:
Life is short, and it is a sin to waste your time. They said I am working. But being diligent is still a waste of a person's time, if doing so costs themselves. Today is a time of rest, and my heart goes out to seek it. When grief still grips me, that's when I feel that this difficult time is passing through my fingers like silver… For now, my whole kingdom belongs to this world. This sun and these shadows, this warmth and this cold rising from the depths of the air: why do you wonder if something dies or people suffer, since everything is written in this window where the sun gives its abundance as a greeting of my mercy?
Emphasizing young Dostoyevsky's calculation of happiness and purpose in life just after his death sentence was overturned (“To be a man among men and remain one forever, no matter what the circumstances, never to be depressed and never lose heart,” Dostoyevsky wrote to his brother, “that is what life is, that is its task.”)
The important thing is to be human and simple. No, the important thing is to be true, then everything fits together, humanity and simplicity. When am I more true than when I was in the world?… What I desire now is not happiness but awareness… I cling to the world with all my actions, to people with all my gratitude and compassion. I don't want to choose between the right and wrong sides of the world, and I don't like to choose… The greatest courage is still staring at the light as in death. Besides, how can I explain the link that leads from this all-consuming love of life to this secret despair?… Despite many searches, this is all I know.
This reflection led Camus to conclude that “there is no love of life without despair of life”; in them he brought out his three cures for the folly of life and the central central question.
Couple with George Saunders – perhaps the closest we have to Camus in our time – about how to love the world more, and revisit Wendell Berry's poetic antidote to despair.
