“Is one going to die, escape by the leap, rebuild a mansion of ideas and forms to one’s own scale? Is one, on the contrary, going to take up the heart-rending and marvelous wager of the absurd?”

So writes Camus in Absurd Freedom, a small section in the book The Myth of Sisyphus (thank you J. Swift!).  As near as I can tell, in this section Camus argues against the constructs we use to try to define, understand, render meaning to, and ultimately constrain life – our “bureaucracy of mind and heart” which, regardless of our desperate efforts, do not write us a blank cheque on eternity…

Instead, he argues that dying unreconciled and not of one’s own free will is essential – – as, “life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning”.

Yes, you heard that right!  To continue to live with impunity and abandon in the great unknowable shadow of absurdity is the ultimate revolt against oblivion!

(Or, as per The Slow Room…)

P.S.  On a tangential note, this got me to thinking about how we tell stories.. with beginning, middle, and end, and especially through endorsing satisfactory resolution of all introduced threads.  It’s no wonder we struggle with accepting the non-reconciliation of our own lives, given we are taught that good stories should always have closure as well as karmic balance.