“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