Man without meaning

Camus gets me.

Since I started reading, truly reading.

I do not mean reading as in forcing yourself to finish a chapter of a Roald Dahl book because your teacher forced you to, I mean to actually look into and understand literature. Finding what books resonate with you, which authors share the same perspectives. The true beauty of books does not lie within their own essence, but in the readers’ emotions and thoughts that emerge, in the journeys they take one.

Although I am an average teenage girl in the 21st century, I always struggled - and still do- to find reasons.

I was always searching for the “why”.

My life revolved around this search for answers to questions I now know are - at times- unsolvable. This constant angst and fear of not knowing the reason behind an action, a pattern, a feeling, tires you out. In media res, I stumbled upon philosophical literature: real men and women that lived - or still do- mediating and surmising their thoughts on paper. Finally, I understood that I am not strange or alone, but in fact surrounded by thousands of other humans on the quest for answers.

But all I got out of reading through centuries of great minds was-  an even harder to untangle- mess.

Until I read The Stranger by Albert Camus. At first, all that stood out was his immaculate use of imagery. The scenery was described in a way that made me feel as if I was by his side, toes in the burning sand. But you expect that from a good book.

After finishing the second part, though, I was captured. Shocked and confused , primarily, but for some reason the ending lingered in my mind as days passed.

Inevitably, I asked “why?”

Why was I so obsessed with the way the story ended? Why did it seem so captivatingly interesting to read about a young man immune to guilt?

Then, I realized.

Not everything has to have meaning.

What even is the meaning of  the word “meaning”?

Camus did just that. He helped me understand that life is not always accompanied by a reason why. Sometimes things happen, people change, disaster strikes, with no reason. As a society, we are so caught up in explanations that we forget to acknowledge the absurdity of our existence.

Some things are yet unknown, others will always be.

And that is okay.