“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”—Albert Camus
I don’t believe in making, or pretending, life any harder than it is. Are there hard times? Of course, but they come and go just as the good; and life is the experience and shapes, in the end, toward where we give our focus.
I believe that’s where all the modern, post-modern, and academic existentialists get it wrong. They stay in the despair, pretending endurance of miseries lived virtue.
It’s not.
That’s where Kierkegaard gets it right, makes movement where academics and determined overthinkers are afraid to follow.
Eventually, if we are to live the fullness, beauty, and discover purpose in this life; we must all get over ourselves, discern life is not about us in and of ourselves but where we fit in—what role we play—in a greater masterpiece of presence in this existence. We must go beyond our own introspection and bullshit, lay down cycles of reason, and let God lead.
Absurd? Of course!
But this is the breakthrough—purpose of the philosophy moderns, post-moderns, and academics erase (then wonder why they’re miserable)—when we find ourselves and the levity of discovering of humor—not cynicism—in the absurdity that opens to us after.
Why stay miserable when such was never as we were meant to stay; when so many others have it worse and still laugh and smile—and mean it—every day; at whatever life presents?
Carrying on, superhuman achievement?
No.
If one is miserable, despair in both life and state, the virtue is to live open enough for possibility, and allowance, of change. This is to hold vulnerable, open-eyed, when world, fear, or pain seek to close us off; to make movement in directions and ways—absurd and unknown—that permit the possibilities we seek.
Though we still may fail, without movements of faith—action in hope—we never have a chance.
I’ll leave the carrying on, deluge of imposed self-despair, to those privileged enough for chosen misery.
I will continue in the absurd, receiving and living joys as they present, appear, and live.
Virtue is the absurd of openness and allowing life to become more; possibility for all that may present when risking to live outside our selves and to be guided by a Greater: wherever, however, It may lead.
Life and virtue are so much more than misery.