baldur

“I was sure of myself, of everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death that was waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that. I hadn’t done this thing but I had done another. So what? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to vindicate me. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout this whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from the depths of my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed it leveled all that had been possible in the equally unreal years that I was living. What did the death of other people or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he see, couldn’t he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger