(last edited a little less than two months ago – left to be one of my incomplete thoughts)
hmm.. it’s becoming pretty obvious that i’m losing all patience.
from “the myth of sisyphus” by albert camus
it is a matter of living in that state of the absurd. i know on what it is founded, this mind and this world straining against each other without being able to embrace each other. i ask for the rule of life of that state, and what i am offered neglects its basis, negates of the terms of the painful opposition, demands of me a resignation. i ask what is involved in the condition i recognize as mine; i know it implies obscurity and ignorance; and i am assured that this ignorance explains everything and that this darkness is my light. but there is no reply here to my intent, and this stirring lyricism cannot hide the paradox from me. one must therefore turn away. kierkegaard may shout in warning: “if man had no eternal consciousness, if, at the bottom of everything, there were merely a wild, seething force producing everything, both large and trifling, in the storm of dark passions, if the bottomless void that nothing can fill underlay all things, what would life be but despair?” this cry is not likely to stop the absurd man. seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. if in order to elude the anxious question: “what would life be?” one must, like the donkey, feed on the roses of illusion, then the absurd mind, rather than resigning itself to falsehood, prefers to adopt fearlessly kierkegaard’s reply: “despair”. everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.
from “steppenwolf” by herman hesse
What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.