Camus famously wrote that accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience, but it should not become a dead end. Rather, it should arouse a revolt that can become fruitful. One that can help us restore a relative meaning to existence.
It’s a deeply comforting thought.
Especially when it comes to our jobs. Because the modern world of work has a tendency fill the deep wells of the absurd to the very brim. Between angry customers, annoying coworkers, corporate layoffs and company rules, absurdity has a thousand gradations.
And when life sends us to that place of insanity where nothing makes sense, sometimes all we can do is laugh out loud and shake our hands and heavens and say, what the fuck?
There is nothing wrong with that. There is no need to feel like a bad sport for pointing a finger at the ridiculousness that is around us. In fact, more of us, offices especially, should make time in the day to sit in a circle and take turns being ridiculous about what work is like.
It would be cathartic, funny and make us feel less alone in our confusion. Besides, seeing the world as absurd is a healthy existential position. The suffocating yet reassuringly familiar flesh of that existential ghost is worth pursuing.
The only agreement, of course, is that it doesn’t end there. That we use our moment as a catapult for a rebound. Camus calls this our lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert. He urges us to use the energy of our infuriation to build momentum and plunge to the heart of future.
Certainly sounds wiser than closing our eyes before the facts of life.
LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Can anyone hinder you from going into exile with a smile?
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Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.
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