What is your personal credo?

  Absurdism is the belief that the human search for meaning in the universe is pointless because the universe lacks an inherent meaning (is fundamentally “absurd”), and therefore any search for meaning is at odds with the universe. Thus, one must accept the futility and meaninglessness of one’s existence to truly begin to find a meaning in it. I’ve always been comforted by these ideas. Absurdism is brutally simplistic in nature, yet resonates with me in a way that other mid-20th century “life has no meaning” schools of thought don’t (the various flavors of existentialism and nihilism). 

I frequently find myself describing my own life as “bizarre and kafkaesque”, a description I don’t believe is that large of an exaggeration. The late teenage years are an inherently liminal part of one’s life, as we now all find ourselves in the midst of college applications and the last year of grade school education (sorry to any juniors reading this, you’ve got a bit to go still). Each essay I write and each form I fill out feels much weightier than it should, each word a load on my shoulders as I struggle to forget that an admission’s officer’s good or bad day could change the course of my life. 

    At the same time, I am faced with assignments that individually don’t really matter; why should I waste time making my lab report as good as possible when I know that I’m going to get at least a 90% just for trying, which is plenty enough for an A grade? The combination of these two extremes is far from canceling out; they collide and ring out in my mind like a cacophony of unrelated sounds, each of which I must distinguish and pay the proper attention to. 

    Everyone who has taken Mr. Mitchell’s “The 20th Century Novel” may have an idea of where I’m going with this. Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus opens with the words “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest— whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.” He later recounts the titular “Myth of Sisyphus”, a man who was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity, and contemplates that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Many interpret this story as a celebration of the menial and the individual’s right to define their own existence. But I’ve always understood it a little differently.

For much of my life, I’ve been expected to achieve. I’ve always felt pressure, both external and self-imposed, to excel at everything I do, no matter how petty a task. As I’ve aged, these responsibilities have shifted from concrete ideas like multiplication and writing cursive to abstract subjects like calculus and physics. Instead of a defined “ability” that I can demonstrate, my “skill” at these subjects is somehow proven by the numbers in Powerschool — who would think that makes any sense? I do not find joy in either success (a so-called “positive outcome”) or in the process of creation (the “struggle towards the heights”) but in completion. Regardless of whether the boulder is doomed to fall down to the mountain’s base after a lengthy struggle, the solace in the moment of pause at the top is incomparable. 

Maybe this essay makes no sense to you. Maybe you close my blog post somehow feeling less informed about me than you did when you opened it. That’s ok! If it’s all absurd to you anyway, what’s it matter? But if you take nothing else away from my blog, read this: take some time to consider what makes you happy, no matter how stupid, comical, or abstract anyone else might find it, and embrace it.

-William King