The Absurd

When I think of the word “absurdity”, I tend to think of something silly, maybe even funny, or something that just doesn’t make sense.

But there’s a more profound, deeply impactful, and disorienting version of the absurd that I often see clients struggling with in the face of major losses. In the wake of the end of a relationship, or the loss of a job, or the death of a loved one, there is an earth-shaking confrontation with this universal absurdity.

French existential writer Albert Camus (1913-1960) described this fundamental absurdity in his book The Myth of Sisyphus as a kind of drama involving three interacting parts.

The first part of the drama is our desire for understanding, a “wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart” (p. 21). We deeply and unavoidably want to understand, to have a feeling of unity from fitting together all the pieces in a way that makes sense.

The second part of the drama is the fact that the world doesn’t seem to make sense to us. With each step we take toward the world, it seems to take a step back and leave understanding out of reach. The world seems contradictory, irrational, and unconcerned with our desire for understanding. Camus calls this the “unreasonable silence of the world” (p. 28).

The third part of the drama is where the absurd appears, which is the interaction between the first two parts. We feel our desire for understanding, and yet the world refuses to fit into our attempts to understand it. Our attempts are impossible, and there is an unbridgeable gap between our desire for understanding and the world itself.

This gap is what Camus refers to as the absurd.

I am both moved and inspired by hearing clients share how they relate to the absurd. Some face it with confusion. Some with frustration. Some with humor. Some with further grief. All are poignant examples of a part of what it means to be human, to live within the absurd.

I like to think that Camus would view my clients’ struggles to relate to the absurd in the same way that I do, which is that it is heroic. He argues for the idea that life is to be found in exactly that struggle. It can be tempting to try to do away with our desire for understanding, or to do away with the world’s irrationality by pretending it makes sense, and landing on some storyline that closes the absurd gap.

And yet, there is vitality, there is life in the tension between our want for understanding and the world’s refusal to give it to us. The tension of absurdity can act as an ongoing reminder of our humble limitations, and the endless opportunities for awe that come from living in relationship to mystery.

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