Tag: Absurdism

After the Vacation

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

After the vacation comes
the brain fog,
the arduous task to reaccept the status quo,
and the quicksand that gradually swallows you
back into the routine you escaped from.

Even though you’ve come back (refreshed) to conquer,
You’re procrastinating still, snoozing, postponing
the great battle.
The warrior’s armor waits for you in the closet.
Your heart still hasn’t synchronized with
the rhythm of the hammer striking the anvil.

But you must get up anyway.
So, you get up now.
You get out of bed.

There’s work to be done.

A cold shower,
then coffee.

You wear your armor.

The sun rises to meet a clear, blue sky
that appears to have never met dark, grey clouds.
But you remember the winter storms.
You remember every war you’ve won.

If God wills it,
you will win this one, too.

And when you’re done,
the boulder will rest on the top of the hill,
and it will never roll back down.


Beirut, Lebanon. Sunset.

November 29, 2023: A Comment on “Life Has No Meaning”

Chris Khatsch2 Comments

“Life has no meaning,” people say as if they’ve uncovered the only truth worth uncovering. In their eyes, I see no hope. I see nothing but Death wearing a hedonist’s cloak.

Who are these people anyway? They behave towards the word “meaning” the same way atheists behave towards the word “God.” They say that there’s no evidence, that no such thing can objectively exist, and so on. When I’m with them, I am not surprised when I hear things like, “If it isn’t objective, it isn’t worthy.”

But why would anyone undervalue their subjectivity? Don’t they know it’s the only way they can experience the world?

“Life has no meaning,” they say in a concluding tone, without realizing that discovering the absurd is a beginning rather than an end.

Yes, the universe may be meaningless and irrational. And, most of the time, that is how I feel it is. But the universe’s meaninglessness cannot be the last discovery one makes.

Absurdism cannot be, like most philosophies, a conclusion. On the contrary, it must initiate something in the heart of man. The one struck by the absurd must be triggered to act on something. He is bound to become Sisyphus – and Sisyphus never stops “working.”

The absurdist will say, “Now that I am aware that life has no meaning, I must do something about it and keep doing it until the end.”

*****

But it is useful to note at the same time that the absurd, hitherto taken as a conclusion, is considered in this essay as a starting point.

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

April 2, 2022: To Find or To Lose Yourself

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I was organizing my bookshelves when one of the books slipped and fell to the floor. It was Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals. I picked it up, opened it, and read the first lines of the preface: “We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselves — how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves.”

‘What he says is true,’ I said. ‘Although, I remember a time when I was out there searching for myself. That’s how I spent my twenties, looking for purpose and the meaning of life, trying to figure out whether I was born to be a rockstar or an entrepreneur. But every discovery I made I drowned in whisky. And I had a good reason to do so: I did not like what I found.’

Today, I’m thirty-four, and I still don’t know who I am or what my purpose is.

The meaninglessness of everything demotivates me, though it cannot keep me from living my life to the fullest. I often manage to forget my inescapable, inevitable death and the absurdity of life, and I manage to enjoy the moment.

But that’s not the point. That’s not the point, at all.

Maybe we — knowers or not — can never find ourselves.

I don’t know… Can’t we? Maybe we can.

On the other hand, sometimes, the goal seems to be the exact opposite — to lose yourself, to get lost, to be intoxicated by life and lose control, to let go, to drown in the sea of forgetfulness and become one with the forgotten. Sometimes, to find ourselves means to lose ourselves.