Speaker 1: There are moments in life when everything around you seems
Speaker 1: to crumble, The goals that once seemed so clear become confusing,
Speaker 1: and what you pursued with so much effort completely loses
Speaker 1: its shine. Who hasn't asked themselves in a moment of
Speaker 1: deep doubt, am I living the life I really want? Or?
Speaker 1: Am I just following a script that isn't mine? What's
Speaker 1: left when the old certainties fall? These questions don't arise
Speaker 1: by chance. They're like echoes of a deeper truth, a
Speaker 1: call that resonates inside you, inviting you to look in
Speaker 1: the mirror and face the only person who really matters you.
Speaker 1: And there, in that silence, you realize that the answers
Speaker 1: you carried simply stopped working. This isn't your fault, it's
Speaker 1: not a moral failure. It's just the moment when reality
Speaker 1: stops matching what you expected from it. Some people spend
Speaker 1: their entire lives avoiding this moment. Some people build layers
Speaker 1: and layers of busyness, of narrative, of invented purpose, of
Speaker 1: goals that seem important but deep down serve only as distraction,
Speaker 1: just so they don't have to look at this emptiness
Speaker 1: head on. And it works for a while, It can
Speaker 1: work for years, even decades. You wake up, work, consume, relate,
Speaker 1: build things, destroy others, and all of this keeps you
Speaker 1: busy enough not to have to ask the question that
Speaker 1: really matters. Until it doesn't work anymore. Until something happens,
Speaker 1: something crumbles, maybe a loss, maybe a deep disappointment, maybe
Speaker 1: just the accumulated exhaustion of pretending that all of it
Speaker 1: made sense, And you find yourself face to face with
Speaker 1: a question you can no longer ignore, a question that
Speaker 1: cuts through all the distractions and justifications you built. And
Speaker 1: now what when the old certainties fall, when the meaning
Speaker 1: you carried like a shield dissolves into thin air. What's
Speaker 1: left of you? Where do you go when there's no
Speaker 1: longer a clear place to go, when there's no longer
Speaker 1: a script, a map, a promise that everything will work
Speaker 1: out if you just follow the right steps. Albert Camu
Speaker 1: spent his entire life looking at this question, not to
Speaker 1: answer it with a comforting solution, not to give you
Speaker 1: a new purpose wrapped in beautiful words, but to show
Speaker 1: that perhaps the question itself is the beginning of something
Speaker 1: more honest, more real, more worthy than any easy answer
Speaker 1: you could come up with. Starting over. For Camu has
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to do with finding a new meaning that
Speaker 1: replaces the old one. It has to do with learning
Speaker 1: to live truly without any meaning at all. When meaning crumbles,
Speaker 1: when that structure that kept everything in place simply falls,
Speaker 1: the first instinctive reaction, almost automatic, is to try to
Speaker 1: rebuild it as quickly as possible. It's desperately natural, it's
Speaker 1: deeply human. You look for a new belief, a new
Speaker 1: narrative that explains you, a new purpose that justifies your existence,
Speaker 1: that gives you reason to keep waking up every day.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a philosophy that promises clarity. Maybe it's an
Speaker 1: ambitious goal that gives you focus. Maybe it's a relationship
Speaker 1: you project as salvation, as if another person could fill
Speaker 1: the whole that opened inside you. And for a moment,
Speaker 1: for a few weeks or months, it seems like it
Speaker 1: really works. It seems like you found the answer, that
Speaker 1: you finally discovered what was missing, that everything makes sense again.
Speaker 1: But the truth, the hard and inconvenient truth, is that
Speaker 1: you just traded one illusion for another. Because the problem
Speaker 1: was never in the old belief that fell in the
Speaker 1: promise that wasn't fulfilled in the meaning that dissolved. The
Speaker 1: problem is that you're still looking for something external, something
Speaker 1: outside of you, some transcendent guarantee to justify your existence,
Speaker 1: to validate your presence in the world. You're still trying
Speaker 1: to fill a void that, perhaps, and this is hard
Speaker 1: to accept, doesn't need to be filled at all. Camue
Speaker 1: calls this the denial of the absurd, which is the
Speaker 1: desperate attempt to escape the human condition by building artificial meanings,
Speaker 1: inventing comforting narratives, pretending that there's a definitive answer waiting
Speaker 1: somewhere when perhaps, and listen to this carefully, there is
Speaker 1: no answer at all. Starting over isn't going back to
Speaker 1: what already fell and trying to put it all together
Speaker 1: again with slightly different pieces. It's not finding an improved version,
Speaker 1: more sophisticated, more convincing of the same lie. It's accepting
Speaker 1: deeply and radically that perhaps life doesn't need any justification
Speaker 1: to keep happening. The absurd in Camus's philosophy is this
Speaker 1: violent clash between two completely irreconcilable forces that coexist within
Speaker 1: human experience. On one side, you have the d rooted
Speaker 1: desire for meaning, for clarity, for answers that explain everything,
Speaker 1: for a coherent narrative that transforms your life into something
Speaker 1: understandable and meaningful. On the other side, you have a
Speaker 1: world that remains completely indifferent to this desire, a universe
Speaker 1: that follows its own physical laws without caring at all
Speaker 1: about your existential anxieties, a reality that simply doesn't respond
Speaker 1: when you scream for meaning, You scream and the world
Speaker 1: stays silent. You search for a greater purpose, a transcendent reason,
Speaker 1: an explanation that finally makes everything make sense, and life
Speaker 1: simply continues indifferent, giving you absolutely nothing. This fundamental disconnect,
Speaker 1: this irresolvable conflict between what you want and what the
Speaker 1: world offers. That's the absurd. And the first thing you
Speaker 1: need to understand is that it's not a tragedy. It's
Speaker 1: not a diagnosis of terminal despair. It's not an existential
Speaker 1: death sentence. It's just the real condition, naked and raw,
Speaker 1: in which all of us live, whether we admit it
Speaker 1: or not. And recognizing this, looking at the absurd without blinking,
Speaker 1: without looking away, without running to the first comforting illusion
Speaker 1: that appears, this doesn't end life. It doesn't paralyze you,
Speaker 1: it doesn't destroy you. On the contrary, it's right there
Speaker 1: in that brutally honest recognition that starting over becomes genuinely possible.
Speaker 1: Because as long as you're desperately searching for a meaning,
Speaker 1: the world will never give you. As long as you're
Speaker 1: waiting for reality to finally justify, you, validate, you explain you, you're
Speaker 1: going to live in permanent and unsustainable anguish. But when
Speaker 1: you accept, really accept, deep in your soul, that perhaps
Speaker 1: there is no meaning at all. When you stop expecting
Speaker 1: reality to owe you something, something fundamental changes inside you.
Speaker 1: You stop living in function of an answer that will
Speaker 1: never come, and you start living simply because you're alive.
Speaker 1: The absurd isn't the end of the journey. It's the
Speaker 1: firm ground, the solid base on which true starting over
Speaker 1: can happen. But why exactly does emptiness scare people so much?
Speaker 1: Why does this absence of meaning provoke such a visceral fear,
Speaker 1: so deep that most people would do anything to avoid it?
Speaker 1: Because emptiness brutally removes all distractions, all justifications, all comfortable
Speaker 1: narratives you use to avoid having to look directly at yourself.
Speaker 1: When you had a clear meaning, a defined purpose, a
Speaker 1: narrative that explained your life. You could justify yourself. You
Speaker 1: could wake up every day and tell yourself that you
Speaker 1: were doing all of that for something greater, for a
Speaker 1: reason that transcended your own doubts and fears. You could
Speaker 1: use that purpose as a protective shield against the fundamental
Speaker 1: uncertainty of existence. But when meaning falls, when that structure crumbles,
Speaker 1: what's left is you completely naked, without excuse, without protection,
Speaker 1: without any guarantee. And that scares you deeply because you
Speaker 1: realize something you maybe always knew but never wanted to admit,
Speaker 1: that there was never any guarantee at all. There was
Speaker 1: never a definitive script written in the stars. There was
Speaker 1: never absolute security waiting at the end of the road.
Speaker 1: You were always alone, facing your own life, always radically
Speaker 1: responsible for your choices, always carried the weight of your
Speaker 1: own existence. The difference is that now you know this
Speaker 1: consciously and inescapably, and knowing this hurts not because life
Speaker 1: is inherently cruel or malevolent, but because the illusion of protection,
Speaker 1: the fantasy that someone or something was taking care of you,
Speaker 1: finally disappeared. The fear doesn't come from life itself, from reality,
Speaker 1: as it is It comes from the total absence of
Speaker 1: external justifications, from the lack of transnit guarantees. It comes
Speaker 1: from realizing that you're radically free, that nobody's going to
Speaker 1: save you, that no narrative is going to protect you,
Speaker 1: and that this terrifying freedom doesn't come with any instruction manual,
Speaker 1: no step by step guide on how to live correctly.
Speaker 1: There's no immediate relief for this. There's no pill that
Speaker 1: dissolves this anguish instantly. There's only the choice, renewed every day,
Speaker 1: to face this reality or flee from it to yet
Speaker 1: another temporary illusion. And here's something absolutely essential you need
Speaker 1: to understand about Camu's thinking. Starting over in his view,
Speaker 1: isn't finding answers. Let that become crystal clear in your mind.
Speaker 1: He's not offering an existential solution wrapped in beautiful words.
Speaker 1: He's not promising that you'll finally discover life's secret meaning
Speaker 1: if you just look closely enough. He's not saying there's
Speaker 1: a deep truth waiting patiently to be revealed to you.
Speaker 1: Starting over in the commusion sense means accepting in a
Speaker 1: radical and definitive way that perhaps there is no solution
Speaker 1: at all to the problem of existence. It means stopping
Speaker 1: the search. It means recognizing that insisting on definitive answers,
Speaker 1: on totalizing explanations, on narratives that finally make everything make sense,
Speaker 1: is just another sophisticated form of fleeing from reality. Because
Speaker 1: as long as you're obsessively seeking a definitive explanation, an
Speaker 1: ultimate meaning, an answer that finally solves the mystery, you're
Speaker 1: not living. You're postponing life. You're waiting, always waiting for
Speaker 1: the magical day when everything will finally make sense and
Speaker 1: you can start living for real. And that day doesn't come.
Speaker 1: It never came, it never will come, because it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: Camu's focus is an explanation. It's not intellectual understanding. It's
Speaker 1: not the construction of meaning. The focus is posture. How
Speaker 1: do you position yourself before a life that doesn't owe
Speaker 1: you any answer, that doesn't promise you any reward, that
Speaker 1: guarantees you absolutely nothing. That's the only question that really matters.
Speaker 1: And the answer doesn't come in words, in concepts, in theories.
Speaker 1: It comes in the way you live each day. And
Speaker 1: here we need to make an absolutely crucial distinction, because
Speaker 1: many people confuse these two completely different states and end
Speaker 1: up lost in the middle of the road. Despair and
Speaker 1: lucidity are not the same thing at all. They're radically
Speaker 1: opposite responses to the same condition. You can look directly
Speaker 1: at the absurd, at the total and definitive absence of meaning,
Speaker 1: at the complete and unchanging indifference of the universe regarding
Speaker 1: your existence, and give up. You can simply tell yourself,
Speaker 1: in a defeated whisper or a silent scream, that if
Speaker 1: nothing makes sense anyway, if there is no purpose at all,
Speaker 1: if the universe doesn't care, then nothing really matters. Then
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter whether you do anything or nothing at all.
Speaker 1: Then why keep trying? Why wake up tomorrow? Why even breathe?
Speaker 1: You can surrender internally in a complete way, let the
Speaker 1: emptiness consume you entirely, without resistance, stop acting because it
Speaker 1: seems there's no reason at all, no valid justification to
Speaker 1: move to keep trying to persist in this strange thing
Speaker 1: called life. This is despair in its purest form, its
Speaker 1: passive and total surrender before the absurd. It's letting the
Speaker 1: absence of meaning paralyze you completely, its transforming lucidity into
Speaker 1: a pretext for inaction. But you can also and this
Speaker 1: is Camue's radical and revolutionary proposal. Look at the absurd
Speaker 1: with exactly the same brutal honesty, with the same penetrating clarity,
Speaker 1: without looking away even a millimeter, and completely refuse this surrender.
Speaker 1: You can recognize with total clarity, without a shadow of doubt,
Speaker 1: without space for self deception, that there is no meaning
Speaker 1: given by reality, that the universe doesn't owe you absolutely anything,
Speaker 1: that there's no transcendent purpose waiting patiently for you somewhere
Speaker 1: in the cosmos, and still consciously choose to live with
Speaker 1: genuine dignity, with total presence, with real intensity. You can
Speaker 1: accept that life has no ready answer and continue anyway,
Speaker 1: not because you discovered some sophisticated psychological trick to make
Speaker 1: everything easier and more bearable, not because you've found a
Speaker 1: secret loophole in the absurd that allows you to escape it,
Speaker 1: but simply because you chose to continue. This is lucidity.
Speaker 1: It's the conscious, deliberate, daily refusal to light to yourself
Speaker 1: about the human condition. It's looking at the truth without
Speaker 1: blinking and keeping walking anyway. Camu doesn't deny the pain,
Speaker 1: he doesn't deny the anguish, he doesn't deny the weight
Speaker 1: of existence. He doesn't say everything will be okay, that
Speaker 1: you'll find peace, that life will become light and easy,
Speaker 1: but he firmly refuses the idea that the absence of
Speaker 1: meaning automatically requires despair. Continuing to live doesn't require naive optimism.
Speaker 1: It doesn't require blind faith in something greater. It doesn't
Speaker 1: require hope in future rewards. It requires only radical honesty
Speaker 1: before the human condition. It requires only the firm and
Speaker 1: conscious decision not to lie to yourself, not to flee
Speaker 1: to comforting illusions, to remain present before reality as it is.
Speaker 1: This is commusion revolt, and you need to understand exactly
Speaker 1: what this means, because the word revolt can create enormous
Speaker 1: confusion if you don't pay attention. When Camu talks about revolt,
Speaker 1: he's not talking about explosive rage against the world, that
Speaker 1: kind of fury that makes you want to break everything.
Speaker 1: It's not loud external rebellion. It's not going out screaming
Speaker 1: in the streets against cosmic injustice. It's not protesting against
Speaker 1: the universe or trying to change it by force, as
Speaker 1: if you had the magical power to bear reality to
Speaker 1: your will just because you want it to be different.
Speaker 1: It's something infinitely more subtle, deeper, harder to capture in words.
Speaker 1: It's an intimate decision, completely silent, deeply personal, and radically
Speaker 1: every day not to lie to yourself about the true
Speaker 1: human condition. It's waking up every day and choosing brutal honesty,
Speaker 1: even when the lie would be more comfortable. It's looking
Speaker 1: in the mirror and recognizing that you're alone facing existence
Speaker 1: without trying to invent imaginary companions. It's breathing inside the
Speaker 1: void without trying to fill it desperately with artificial narratives.
Speaker 1: It's looking at the absurd, at the complete absence of meaning,
Speaker 1: at the total indifference of the universe, and saying, with
Speaker 1: absolute clarity, I won't pretend there's meaning when there isn't.
Speaker 1: I won't build comforting illusions to protect myself from the truth.
Speaker 1: But I also won't give up. I won't surrender. I
Speaker 1: won't let the void paralyze me. Gusture a specific way
Speaker 1: of being in the world, a way of positioning yourself
Speaker 1: before existence. Revolt doesn't change external reality. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: the universe less indifferent. It doesn't solve the fundamental mystery
Speaker 1: of existence. It doesn't make the world start making sense,
Speaker 1: but it completely changes the relationship you have with all
Speaker 1: of this. You stop being a passive victim of the
Speaker 1: absence of meaning, someone who suffers helplessly before cosmic indifference.
Speaker 1: You become someone who chooses consciously and deliberately to keep
Speaker 1: living with lucidity despite everything. And this choice doesn't need
Speaker 1: external justification. It doesn't need a greater reason to validate it.
Speaker 1: It's sufficient in itself. Revolt is the central axis, the
Speaker 1: fundamental core of commusion starting over. It's what transforms paralyzing
Speaker 1: emptiness into a space of authentic freedom, living without external appeal.
Speaker 1: What exactly does this mean in everyday practice. It means
Speaker 1: completely stopping expecting validation from any instance outside your own
Speaker 1: immediate experience. Stop seeking approval from the world, as if
Speaker 1: the world were a judge that needs to approve you
Speaker 1: from God, as if there were a cosmic entity evaluating
Speaker 1: each of your choices from the future, As if some
Speaker 1: improved version of yourself would finally validate you from society,
Speaker 1: as if collective norms and expectations had the power to
Speaker 1: determine the value of your life. From your family, as
Speaker 1: if you needed to fulfill the dreams they projected onto you,
Speaker 1: from your friends, as if their opinion defined who you
Speaker 1: really are, from any external authority, real or imaginary, that
Speaker 1: you created in your mind as having supreme power to
Speaker 1: judge whether your life is worthwhile or a complete waste.
Speaker 1: It means recognizing, in a radical way to the last consequences,
Speaker 1: that life doesn't need to be justified to be lived,
Speaker 1: that existing doesn't require permission, that being here doesn't depend
Speaker 1: on you meeting some predefined criterion. You don't need a
Speaker 1: greater reason, grandiose and transcendent that explains why you're taking
Speaker 1: up space in the universe. You don't need a cosmic
Speaker 1: purpose that validates your presence in the world, as if
Speaker 1: the universe were keeping a record of who deserves to
Speaker 1: be here. You don't need a heroic narrative that transforms
Speaker 1: your life into something worth telling, into something that impresses others,
Speaker 1: into something that leaves a legacy. You're simply here now,
Speaker 1: at this exact moment. You exist. You're alive. You breathe,
Speaker 1: your heart beats, your mind thinks, your eyes see, and
Speaker 1: being here existing just because breathing, because breathing is what
Speaker 1: living bodies do. Feeling because feeling is inevitable thinking because
Speaker 1: thought happens acting, because life is necessarily movement. This is
Speaker 1: already sufficient in itself. It doesn't need additional justification coming
Speaker 1: from outside. It doesn't need external validation that gives you
Speaker 1: permission to continue. This isn't euphoric liberation that makes you
Speaker 1: dance in the streets feeling like you finally discovered life's secret.
Speaker 1: It's not a magical and illuminated revelation that suddenly makes
Speaker 1: everything light, easy, and weightless. It's a sober, realistic condition,
Speaker 1: sometimes even uncomfortable and heavy. It's realizing that action, any
Speaker 1: action you take by itself, without needing to lead anywhere,
Speaker 1: is already enough. You act because you're alive, because life
Speaker 1: is by definition movement, flow, constant change, because existing is
Speaker 1: necessarily doing something, even if it's just existing, even if
Speaker 1: it's just remaining. Not because action will take you to
Speaker 1: some special place in the future, to some promised reward
Speaker 1: that will finally make everything worthwhile, to some glorious final
Speaker 1: state of fulfillment where you can finally say I made it.
Speaker 1: Not because there's a brilliant achievement waiting patiently at the
Speaker 1: end of the road, ready to redeem you from all
Speaker 1: the anguish, but simply because acting in one way or
Speaker 1: another is what you do when you're alive. It's the
Speaker 1: very nature of existence. Life stops needing external justification to
Speaker 1: have permission to continue, and this, paradoxically and deeply liberating
Speaker 1: for those who can accept it, is exactly what allows
Speaker 1: it to really start happening without the oppressive chains of
Speaker 1: impossible expectations you carried. But pay very close attention here,
Speaker 1: because this is one of the most misinterpreted points of
Speaker 1: Camus's thinking. He's not talking about common hope, the hope,
Speaker 1: you know, the hope that sustains you day to day.
Speaker 1: He's not telling you to keep your head up and
Speaker 1: hope everything gets better, that the future will bring the
Speaker 1: missing answers, that there's something grand and wonderful waiting for
Speaker 1: you if you just hang on long enough. He's doing
Speaker 1: exactly the opposite of that. The hope he criticizes and
Speaker 1: rejects is the one that projects meaning into the future,
Speaker 1: that places all of life's significance in something that's yet
Speaker 1: to happen, That hope that says hang in there, now,
Speaker 1: endure the difficult present, because up ahead, at some indefinite future, moment,
Speaker 1: everything will make sense, everything will be worth it, everything
Speaker 1: will reveal itself as part of a bigger plan. This hope,
Speaker 1: for Camue is a sophisticated and dangerous form of fleeing
Speaker 1: from reality, because while you're waiting for the future, while
Speaker 1: you're projecting all the significance of your life to a
Speaker 1: moment that hasn't arrived yet, you're not living now. You're
Speaker 1: postponing life. You're refusing the only moment that really exists,
Speaker 1: which is this present moment. You're denying the only thing
Speaker 1: you really have, which is now. I'm not emotionally condemning
Speaker 1: those who hope. I'm not saying it's morally wrong. I'm
Speaker 1: not judging anyone. I'm just showing as clearly as possible
Speaker 1: that this hope fundamentally prevents you from starting over in
Speaker 1: the Commusian sense, because starting over requires that you remain here,
Speaker 1: totally present, without fleeing to future promises, without comforting guarantees,
Speaker 1: without the illusion that there's something better, something more meaningful,
Speaker 1: something finally satisfying, waiting for you somewhere in time. What
Speaker 1: exists is now, this moment, this breath, this reality, and
Speaker 1: either you accept this completely or you keep fleeing indefinitely
Speaker 1: to the next temporary illusion. And when you accept, when
Speaker 1: you really stop fleeing and accept the condition as it
Speaker 1: is without trying to soften it or romanticize it, something
Speaker 1: deeply interesting and unexpected happens inside you. Freedom appears, But
Speaker 1: pay attention because it's not the freedom you imagine. It's
Speaker 1: not the freedom from movies or self help books. It's
Speaker 1: not a magical power that suddenly gives you the ability
Speaker 1: to do absolutely whatever you want without consequences. It's not
Speaker 1: a sudden capacity to fulfill all your desires, as if
Speaker 1: you found a magic lamp. It's not a liberating euphoria
Speaker 1: that makes you feel invincible, powerful, capable of conquering the world.
Speaker 1: The freedom that appears when you accept the absurd is
Speaker 1: something completely different, something much more sober and much more real.
Speaker 1: Freedom appears as an empty space, as an absence, as
Speaker 1: the dissolution of all the chains you didn't even know
Speaker 1: you were carrying. Think about this for a second. When
Speaker 1: there's no meaning given by reality, when there's no purpose
Speaker 1: imposed by some external authority, whether it's God, society, tradition,
Speaker 1: or any other instance you imagine has power over you,
Speaker 1: When there's no pre established script you need to follow
Speaker 1: faithfully to be considered successful or valid. What exactly is left.
Speaker 1: You're left completely naked, without imaginary obligations you created in
Speaker 1: your own head based on what you think the world expects,
Speaker 1: Without existential debts you never really incurred, but carry as
Speaker 1: if they were real, Without the oppressive and constant need
Speaker 1: to be something specific, to fulfill some determined social role,
Speaker 1: to achieve some predefined objective, just to justify your presence
Speaker 1: in the world, to prove you deserve to be alive.
Speaker 1: Life stops owing something to the world, you stop owing
Speaker 1: something to the universe. This freedom is deeply heavy because
Speaker 1: it doesn't come with clear direction. It doesn't come with
Speaker 1: a map that shows you the right path. It doesn't
Speaker 1: come with a ready meaning that tells you exactly what
Speaker 1: to do. But it's real, it's authentic. It's the genuine
Speaker 1: freedom to choose without expecting reward, to act without guarantee
Speaker 1: of success, to live without external validation. It's not comfortable,
Speaker 1: it's not easy. It's not what most people imagine when
Speaker 1: they think of freedom. But it's honest, it's true, and
Speaker 1: maybe it's the only freedom that really exists. The only
Speaker 1: one that doesn't depend on comforting illusions now, and this
Speaker 1: is absolutely critical to understand Camukh correctly. You need to
Speaker 1: pay very concentrated attention to this specific point, because it's
Speaker 1: exactly here that one of the biggest and most dangerous
Speaker 1: confusions about all commusion thought happens, a misunderstanding that completely
Speaker 1: destroys his proposal. Living without given meaning doesn't mean at
Speaker 1: all inventing an artificial purpose to fill the void that remained.
Speaker 1: This is an extremely common confusion, absurdly widespread, and deeply
Speaker 1: dangerous for the real understanding of what Camu is proposing.
Speaker 1: Many people read Camu, or read about Camu in summarized
Speaker 1: and superficial texts, or hear someone talking about him without
Speaker 1: really having dived into the work, and come away with
Speaker 1: the completely mistaken impression that he's saying something along the
Speaker 1: lines of since the world doesn't give you meaning, create
Speaker 1: your own personal meaning. Invent your unique and non transferable purpose.
Speaker 1: Be the heroic and self determined author of your own
Speaker 1: existential narrative. Actively build meaning through your conscious choices and
Speaker 1: deliberate actions. Transform yourself into the creator of your own
Speaker 1: symbolic universe. No. A thousand times no absolutely and categorically
Speaker 1: no completely. No. Doing exactly what I just described would
Speaker 1: be just trading an external illusion imposed by the world
Speaker 1: or by God or by society for an internal illusion
Speaker 1: created by yourself, but equally illusory. It would just be
Speaker 1: filling the frightening void left by the collapse of transcendent
Speaker 1: meaning with yet another comforting lie, only this time a
Speaker 1: sophisticated lie you invented yourself and in which you try
Speaker 1: to believe with all your strength. It would just be
Speaker 1: replacing dependence on a meaning given from outside with dependence
Speaker 1: on a meaning manufactured from within, but still remaining dependent
Speaker 1: on the very idea that life needs meaning to be livable.
Speaker 1: Camu doesn't propose at all that you create a new
Speaker 1: meaning to replace the old one that crumbled. He doesn't
Speaker 1: suggest you build a new meaningful narrative to fill the
Speaker 1: existential whole left when the previous meaning dissolved into thin air.
Speaker 1: He proposes something infinitely more radical, more difficult, more uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and more honest than that. He proposes that you accept completely,
Speaker 1: definitively and radically, without space for self deception or comforting
Speaker 1: half truths, that perhaps there is no meaning anywhere in
Speaker 1: the universe, neither graciously given by the external world, nor
Speaker 1: heroically created by you internally, nor discovered through spiritual search,
Speaker 1: nor constructed through personal effort. And that this, surprisingly, against
Speaker 1: all your initial expectations and fears, is perfectly fine. That
Speaker 1: you can, in fact live a life with crystalline lucidity,
Speaker 1: genuine dignity, real intensity, and total presence without needing any
Speaker 1: meaning that justifies your existence, without needing any narrative that
Speaker 1: explains why you're here, without needing any transcendent justification that
Speaker 1: validates your permanence in the world. Starting over in the
Speaker 1: deep and authentic sense that Camu is proposing isn't ingeniously
Speaker 1: building a new, more sophisticated, and more personal illusion. It's
Speaker 1: learning to live radically without any illusion of any kind.
Speaker 1: It's accepting and completely embracing the total and absolute nakedness
Speaker 1: of existence without trying to cover it with comforting conceptual clothes.
Speaker 1: And where exactly does this happen? Where do you practice
Speaker 1: this commusion posture? Not in great transformative decisions that change
Speaker 1: your entire life all at once, Not in epic moments
Speaker 1: of revelation where everything finally makes sense, Not in extraordinary
Speaker 1: experiences that take you out of the every day and
Speaker 1: put you in a special state of consciousness. It happens
Speaker 1: in the ordinary day, in the absolutely repetitive every day,
Speaker 1: in the simple and direct way you deal with the
Speaker 1: small things of daily life. Starting over isn't a single
Speaker 1: transformative event that solves everything once and for all. It's
Speaker 1: a posture you carry daily that you practice in each
Speaker 1: small choice, in each banal action, in each ordinary moment.
Speaker 1: It's constant fidelity to your own lucidity. It's choosing every day,
Speaker 1: when waking up, when drinking coffee, when working, when talking,
Speaker 1: when resting, not to lie to yourself, not to pretend
Speaker 1: there's meaning when you know there isn't, Not to seek
Speaker 1: distractions that distance you from naked and raw reality, not
Speaker 1: to flee to comforting narratives that make everything temporarily easier.
Speaker 1: The every day becomes the real field of resistance, not
Speaker 1: because it's glorious or special or mystical in some way,
Speaker 1: but simply because it's where life really happens. It's where
Speaker 1: you are, it's where you exist, and if you're going
Speaker 1: to live in a genuinely honest way, it's there, exactly there,
Speaker 1: that you need to be present don't romanticize this, don't
Speaker 1: transform routine into something mystical or transcendent. Just recognize with
Speaker 1: absolute sobriety that it's there in the small and repetitive
Speaker 1: things that you concretely practice the commusium posture. Either you
Speaker 1: practice it or you pretend it's not necessary and go
Speaker 1: back to the old comforting illusions. And then we finally
Speaker 1: arrive at Sisyphus, which is probably the most powerful and
Speaker 1: best known image in all of Camus's philosophy. You probably
Speaker 1: know the story the Greek myth Sisyphus was condemned by
Speaker 1: the gods to eternally push an enormous rock to the
Speaker 1: top of a mountain, and every time the rock finally
Speaker 1: gets up there, after all the brutal and exhausting effort,
Speaker 1: it rolls back down, and he has to descend and
Speaker 1: push again, and the rock reaches the top and falls,
Speaker 1: and he descends and pushes forever, without air and without escape,
Speaker 1: without redemption. Camu uses this image not as an edifying moral,
Speaker 1: not as a lesson about perseverance or resilience, but as
Speaker 1: a precise symbol of the human condition. Sisyphus doesn't defeat
Speaker 1: the rock. He doesn't manage to finally keep it at
Speaker 1: the top. He doesn't escape the punishment, he doesn't find
Speaker 1: a clever solution to the problem. But there's a specific moment,
Speaker 1: the crucial moment, when he descends the mountain, after the
Speaker 1: rock has fallen again, when he's completely conscious. He knows
Speaker 1: exactly what he's doing. He knows the rock will fall
Speaker 1: again when he pushes it to the top. He knows
Speaker 1: he'll have to descend again. He knows this will repeat
Speaker 1: eternally without any change. And still he continues. Not because
Speaker 1: he discovered some secret meaning hidden in the task, not
Speaker 1: because the repetition magically became meaningful, not because he transformed
Speaker 1: the absurd into something beautiful or transcendent, simply because he
Speaker 1: chooses to continue. And this choice, this clear and lucid consciousness,
Speaker 1: is absolutely everything. Camu ends the essay with a phrase
Speaker 1: that many people misinterpret. He says, we must imagine Sisyphus happy,
Speaker 1: not because Sisyphus is joyful or enthusiastic or satisfied, but
Speaker 1: because he's whole. He's not lying to himself about the
Speaker 1: reality of what he's doing. He's not waiting for the
Speaker 1: situation to miraculously change. He's not projecting future meaning. He
Speaker 1: completely accepted the condition, and within this radical acceptance he
Speaker 1: found a posture, not a meaning, not an answer, not
Speaker 1: a solution, a posture, a way of being present before
Speaker 1: the absurd, without despair and without illusion. And this is
Speaker 1: the fundamental truth about Commusian starting over that you need
Speaker 1: to understand deeply. It doesn't happen just once. It's not
Speaker 1: a transformed moment that definitively solves everything and allows you
Speaker 1: to rest. It's a choice that's renewed every day. Literally
Speaker 1: every day, you wake up and the absurd is still there.
Speaker 1: The world is still indifferent, life still has no given meaning,
Speaker 1: The void still exists, and you need to choose again,
Speaker 1: continue with lucidity or give up and flee to yet
Speaker 1: another temporary illusion. Live honestly or lie to yourself one
Speaker 1: more time. There's no guarantee of reward whatsoever. There's no
Speaker 1: promise that it will get easier over time. There's no
Speaker 1: magical end point where you finally understand everything completely and
Speaker 1: can rest peacefully. Lucidity needs to be constantly renewed, because
Speaker 1: the temptation to lie to yourself never completely disappears. The
Speaker 1: temptation to seek a comforting meaning, to build a new
Speaker 1: protective narrative to flee from naked and raw reality is
Speaker 1: always there, always present, always whispering in your ear that
Speaker 1: there's an easier way, and you need to consciously and
Speaker 1: deliberately refuse this temptation, not just once every day. Starting
Speaker 1: over is repetition, it's constant fidelity. It's the daily decision
Speaker 1: to keep being brutally honest with yourself, even when it
Speaker 1: would be infinitely easier and more comfortable not to be.
Speaker 1: And the void, the void that scared you so much
Speaker 1: in the beginning. The void doesn't magically disappear. It doesn't vanish.
Speaker 1: It's not filled or dissolved or overcome. You don't defeat
Speaker 1: the void. You don't resolve it as if it were
Speaker 1: a problem with a defined solution. What changes, and this
Speaker 1: is absolutely essential, is the relationship you have with it.
Speaker 1: When you finally stop trying to fill it desperately, when
Speaker 1: you stop fighting against it as if it were an
Speaker 1: enemy that needs to be defeated. When you simply accept
Speaker 1: that it's a permanent and inalienable part of the human condition,
Speaker 1: it completely loses control over you. It stops being a
Speaker 1: terrifying enemy. It stops being something that paralyzes you. It
Speaker 1: stops being the black hole that threatens to consume you.
Speaker 1: It becomes just a fact, a neutral characteristic of existence,
Speaker 1: something that's there, that was always there, that will always
Speaker 1: be there, but that no longer needs to define you
Speaker 1: or control you. And you can live with this. You
Speaker 1: can carry this void without despair. You can look at
Speaker 1: it without paralyzing fear. You can coexist with it without
Speaker 1: constantly needing distractions or comforting narratives, because you no longer
Speaker 1: need a transcendent meaning to justify your life. You're alive,
Speaker 1: You exist, You breathe, you feel, you think, you act,
Speaker 1: and this surprisingly is already completely sufficient. Starting over doesn't
Speaker 1: promise you eternal peace. It doesn't promise you guaranteed happiness
Speaker 1: or definitive answers to the mysteries of existence. It promises
Speaker 1: only lucidity, the real stability of living with honesty, without
Speaker 1: comforting illusions, without artificial narratives. And maybe when you look
Speaker 1: at this with total sobriety, that's exactly where everything begins.
Speaker 1: Start over by accepting the absurd