Status Updates From El mito de Sísifo

““The only solution,” he said, “is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. Otherwise, what need would we have of God? We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice.””
“He does not say: “This is absurd,” but rather: “This is God: we must rely on him, even if he does not correspond to any of our rational categories.””

“You teach me that this wonderful and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue, but you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry. I shall never know.”

“We live on the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time.”

“It is probably true that a man remains forever unknown to us, and that there is in him something irreducible that escapes us. But practically I know men and recognize them by their behavior, by the totality of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by their presence.” “I can define them practically, appreciate them practically, by gathering together the sum of their consequences.”

“In a sense, and as in a melowdrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. Let’s not go too far in such analogies, however, but rather return to the everyday words. It is merely confessing that that ‘is not worth the trouble.’ Living, naturally, is never easy.”

“On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living, I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.)”