1. ...Life is absurd 🪨
Updated: Oct 18
And that's worth celebrating.
I've spent a ridiculous amount of my life trying to figure out how to live it.
Searching for meaning.
Questioning decisions.
Regretting choices.
Wondering whether I'd be happier somewhere else, doing something else, being someone else.
Trying to work out whether I'm getting this whole life thing right.
As though somewhere, hidden among the billions of people who have lived and died, somebody has discovered the correct answer.
And perhaps I've just missed it.
But lately, I've been entertaining a rather uncomfortable possibility.
What if there is no right answer?
What if life doesn't have an ultimate purpose?
What if the universe doesn't give a damn whether I'm happy, successful, fulfilled or remembered?
What if everything I've been taught about what makes life worth living is simply somebody else's attempt to make sense of something they don't understand either?
And what if that's not a tragedy?
What if it's the most liberating realisation of all?
Welcome to the absurd.
We're all looking for something that might not exist.
Think about it.
We're born without asking to be here.
We spend our childhood absorbing other people's beliefs about how life works.
We're told what's right.
What's wrong.
What success looks like.
What we should believe.
What we should fear.
What makes someone a good person.
What makes a life worthwhile.
Then we're released into adulthood to pursue these things.
Get educated.
Find a career.
Earn money.
Find someone to love.
Buy a house.
Have children.
Work hard.
Save for retirement.
And hopefully squeeze in a few enjoyable experiences before we die.
It's a fairly convincing programme.
Millions of people follow it.
Some find it deeply fulfilling.
Others spend their lives wondering why, having done everything they were supposed to do, something still feels missing.
Because underneath all those expectations sits a question we rarely stop to examine.
Who decided this was what life was supposed to be about?
And perhaps more importantly:
Do I actually agree?
The universe isn't particularly interested in our expectations.
We want life to mean something.
We want certainty.
We want fairness.
We want things to last.
We want answers.
And we'd quite like to avoid dying.
Unfortunately, reality appears to have other ideas.
Meaning isn't provided with our birth certificate.
Certainty is largely an illusion.
Good people suffer.
Everything changes.
The biggest questions remain unanswered.
And death is the one appointment none of us gets to cancel.
We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to reconcile these contradictions.
We search for explanations.
We create beliefs.
We follow traditions.
We pursue achievements.
We accumulate possessions.
We convince ourselves that happiness is waiting somewhere in the future.
And when reality refuses to cooperate, we suffer.
Not always because of what has happened.
But because of what we believe should have happened.
My life should be better.
People should behave differently.
I should have made different decisions.
I should be more successful.
I should be happier.
Perhaps some of those expectations are reasonable.
But others are simply arguments with reality.
And reality has an irritating habit of winning.
Albert Camus had a rather inconvenient idea.
The French-Algerian philosopher Albert Camus recognised something fundamental about the human condition.
We desperately want existence to make sense.
But the universe doesn't provide the answers we're looking for.
He called this confrontation the absurd.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explored what it means to live when the universe refuses to explain itself.
His conclusion wasn't that we should surrender.
Quite the opposite.
He imagined Sisyphus, condemned to push a boulder up a mountain for eternity, only to watch it roll back down.
An existence that appears utterly pointless.
Yet Camus ends with the extraordinary suggestion that we must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Not because his circumstances have improved.
Not because the boulder suddenly has a purpose.
But because his awareness and defiance allow him to confront his condition without surrendering to it.
The absurd doesn't have to defeat us.
We can recognise it.
Accept it.
Rebel against it.
And continue living.
I find that strangely inspiring.
Perhaps our greatest mistake is trying to escape the absurd.
We humans are remarkably creative when it comes to avoiding uncomfortable questions.
Religion can offer divine purpose.
Culture provides expectations.
Society defines success.
Consumerism promises satisfaction.
Self-help offers formulas.
And social media supplies an endless parade of people apparently living better lives than our own.
There's always another answer.
Another belief.
Another achievement.
Another purchase.
Another version of ourselves to pursue.
And perhaps some of these things genuinely enrich our lives.
But they can also become distractions from the uncomfortable reality that nobody knows with certainty what existence is ultimately for.
We can spend our entire lives following a script without ever questioning who wrote it.
And here's what bothers me.
What if we reach the end of our lives having successfully lived according to somebody else's idea of what mattered?
We might have been successful.
Respected.
Wealthy.
Admired.
But did we consciously choose what we were pursuing?
Or did we simply become very good at playing a game we never agreed to enter?
That's a question worth asking before the final whistle.
The absurd isn't the problem. Our resistance to it might be.
I've started to wonder how much unnecessary suffering comes from demanding things that life cannot guarantee.
We demand meaning when perhaps meaning is something we experience.
We demand certainty when uncertainty makes discovery possible.
We demand permanence when impermanence makes moments precious.
We demand justice from the universe when justice is something we must create.
We demand answers when mystery gives us something to explore.
We fear death so much that we sometimes forget to enjoy being alive.
None of this means suffering is imaginary.
Pain is real.
Loss is real.
Injustice is real.
And some circumstances are genuinely awful.
Absurdism doesn't magically make those things disappear.
But perhaps it can change how we respond to them.
We can stop demanding that life become something else before allowing ourselves to appreciate what it already is.
And that changes everything.
Meaning doesn't have to last forever to be real.
I've become increasingly sceptical of the idea that life needs some overarching meaning.
As though every experience must contribute to a grand purpose.
Every achievement must lead somewhere.
Every hardship must teach us something.
Every moment must somehow justify our existence.
What an exhausting way to live.
Perhaps meaning is much simpler.
Perhaps it's something we experience.
Like a flame.
It burns.
It illuminates.
It warms.
And eventually, it disappears.
But its disappearance doesn't mean it never existed.
Think about the last time you experienced something genuinely meaningful.
A conversation.
A moment with someone you love.
A piece of music.
A beautiful view.
Creating something.
Achieving something you cared about.
Laughing until your stomach hurt.
Did you stop to ask whether the experience contributed to the ultimate purpose of the universe?
Probably not.
You were too busy experiencing it.
Perhaps meaning doesn't need to be eternal. Perhaps it just needs to be experienced.
And if that's true, we can stop searching for the meaning of life and start paying attention to the meaning in life.
And what if uncertainty is actually freedom?
This is the part I find both terrifying and exhilarating.
If there is no predetermined purpose, no guaranteed destination and no universally prescribed way to live, then perhaps we have more freedom than we realise.
We can question what we've inherited.
Challenge what we're told.
Reject expectations that don't reflect our values.
Redefine success.
Change direction.
Create something.
Commit to something.
Live differently.
Not because we've discovered the correct way to live.
But because we've consciously chosen how we want to live.
Of course, freedom doesn't guarantee happiness.
Our choices have consequences.
Other people matter.
And our circumstances place very real limits on what's possible.
But we may have more influence over our experience of life than we recognise.
We cannot always choose what happens to us. But we can often choose what we do next.
And perhaps that's enough.
We don't need certainty to act.
We don't need guarantees to love.
We don't need permanence to appreciate.
We don't need universal meaning to create something meaningful.
We can participate in life without first demanding an explanation for it.
So why not celebrate the absurd?
Consider how extraordinary our situation actually is.
We're conscious creatures living on a small planet orbiting an ordinary star in a universe containing hundreds of billions of galaxies.
We exist for an almost unimaginably brief period of cosmic time.
We don't know why we're here.
We don't know whether existence has an ultimate purpose.
We don't know what, if anything, happens after death.
Yet here we are.
Thinking.
Feeling.
Loving.
Laughing.
Creating.
Imagining.
Questioning.
Somehow, against extraordinary odds, we get to experience being alive.
And what do we do with this remarkable opportunity?
We worry about whether we're successful enough.
Whether people approve of us.
Whether somebody else has a better life.
Whether we made the right decisions.
Whether we'll be remembered.
Whether we're doing existence correctly.
It's magnificently ridiculous.
And I include myself in every word of that.
But perhaps recognising the ridiculousness is the beginning of something wonderful.
Perhaps we can stop taking our expectations quite so seriously.
Laugh at ourselves a little more.
Appreciate what we have.
Question what we've been told.
Create things simply because we want to create them.
Love people without demanding guarantees.
Pursue experiences without needing them to prove anything.
And accept that some questions may never have answers.
Not with resignation.
But with curiosity.
Courage.
Humour.
And a healthy dose of defiance.
Because the absurd isn't something we necessarily need to overcome.
It's something we can learn to live with.
And perhaps even celebrate.
Life is absurd. Life is worth living.
I still struggle with uncertainty.
I still question decisions.
I still imagine alternative lives.
I still get frustrated when reality doesn't meet my expectations.
And I suspect I always will.
Understanding the absurd doesn't make me immune to being human.
But it offers me another way of looking at existence.
I don't have to discover why I'm here before deciding what matters to me.
I don't have to resolve every contradiction.
I don't have to eliminate uncertainty.
I don't have to live according to somebody else's definition of success.
And I don't have to wait for life to become perfect before participating in it.
Perhaps the greatest tragedy isn't that we die.
Perhaps it's that we can spend so much of our limited existence preparing, worrying, regretting and searching for answers that we forget to experience being alive.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life waiting for the universe to explain itself.
I've got things I want to create.
People I want to love.
Places I want to explore.
Experiences I want to have.
And plenty of mistakes left to make.
I may never know what existence ultimately means.
I'm increasingly comfortable with that.
Because I don't need the universe's permission to find something worth living for.
And neither do you.
Life is absurd.
So question it.
Challenge it.
Laugh at it.
Embrace it.
And above all, live it.
Celebrate the absurd.
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