Mexico, December 2020
Dear N.,
Thank you for your last letter. I read it with great interest, and I have to admit that more than once I was deeply touched. I appreciate your trust in me, and I admire your courage to tell me such intimate and sensitive matters. I am truly sorry for Tom’s passing away – I know how much you loved him…
These are difficult times for you, as we already said on a previous occasion, but the experience you describe in your last letter undoubtedly makes it even harder for you: “…and I saw for the first time his eyes, once bright, now dry; his skin once smooth, now rigid; his face always so jovial, withered. … And then I understood that he was gone, that he would never be with me again… And then I knew how horrible death is…”
After reading your description, I can fully understand what you write below: “…it is becoming more and more difficult for me to live…”
You experienced the terrible death of a beloved person, and I understand your feeling that the meaning of life is slipping out of your hands. But you shouldn’t feel selfish to think about your own life and death. After all, the deaths we witness are always those of others, but the only one that belongs to us is our own. So don’t blame yourself if your thoughts are now about the “nonsense” of your life, because on one hand, death is unavoidable; and on the other, often it is only through these experiences – the passing of someone close to us – that we manage to think about our own death, and with it about our life.
Indeed, from that perspective, our life seems a pitiful cycle: We are born, achieve a few things (or many, for that matter) and eventually we die, and everything we have done becomes a “vain effort”. Your description reminded me of this character from the Greek mythology – Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to endure “vain efforts” that were repeated over and over for all eternity. And this led me to look for a book that a friend had given me a few years ago, and that I now remembered because it mentions that mythical character in its title: The Myth of Sisyphus, by the philosopher Albert Camus. Let me share some ideas that I found interesting.
In this text, the French philosopher uses the fate of Sisyphus as a metaphor for our daily life and the sense of absurdity that permeates it, or what you call the “meaningless” of life or “the monotonous routine of living”. For him, the fact that we are going to die reveals the absurdity of our lives, because:
“Under the fatal light of our destiny, its uselessness [of life] becomes evident. No values and no efforts are justifiable in the face of the cruel mathematics that dictates our condition”.
But I am not telling you this to reaffirm your feelings of despair – Camus’ meditation is not gloomy, but rather expresses a luminous force. He says that yes, life is absurd, and death reveals this to us, but this does not mean that we should surrender to the absurd, not even ignore it – on the contrary, we should keep it in our mind and intensify it:
“Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is above all contemplating it”.
This is not an ordinary thing to do, because although most people think about their death from time to time, they think about it vaguely, remotely, and don’t accept it into their lives as an essential part of their existence. They live their lives as if death does not exist, and therefore turn their back on the absurd, without making their lives any less absurd.
But do not think that embracing the absurd is a merely passive attitude of resignation. It is, rather, an active act of affirmation, or what the philosopher calls “revolt”:
“Revolt is a constant confrontation between a person and his own lack of understanding [of life]. … It challenges the world every second again. … This revolt means being sure of a crushing fate, without the resignation that should accompany it”.
What if you decide to defy the absurdity of your life, instead of resigning to it and giving up your vitality? What if, without denying the meaninglessness of life, we could make our life still worth living?
You say that you no longer find any reason to live, and your words suggest a resignation to life. But I know that it is not life that you reject, but rather the absurdity of life, so that resignation is really closing your eyes in face of this “meaninglessness”. This, for Camus, is a form of suicide, which might be physical or psychological, and which is the opposite attitude to that of revolt:
“In contrast, suicide, in its own way, settles the absurd. It covers up the absurd with death. But I know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled. It escapes suicide if it is simultaneously awareness of death and rejection of death”.
You are aware of death – can you still reject it? Rejecting it has nothing to do with turning your back to it, but with embracing life together with its absurdity!
So you ask, how can you go on living? Well, there is no ready-made answer here. It would certainly be foolish of me to tell you to forget those deaths that have been so painful for you, and move on as if nothing has happened… But I think that Camus’ ideas provide a magnificent way of conceiving life: Life is absurd – granted, but to live authentically means, contrary to common beliefs, to keep the absurd alive, without falling into vain hopes nor into mere resignation. This implies a lucid and creative attitude which is a true rebellion that must be carried out day by day, which is the only thing capable of giving value to life:
“The revolt gives life its value. When it is spread out over the whole life-time, it restores the majesty of life”.
So, even with all the pain and uncertainty that weighs on your life, you can rise against absurd death (but also against all those ways of denying the absurd) and make your life something precious. Only then will it be worth living in this world, with your beloved ones, and especially with yourself.
I hope that these ideas that I have shared with you with all my heart will help you go through these difficult times towards a new dawn in which you can embrace life again.
With sincere affection,
O.