One Must Imagine Marty and John Happy: Two Strangers Discuss the Absurd in an Ambleside Pub

“Camus.” It wasn’t a question. I turned from the bar to find a man standing beside me. He nodded at the quotation emblazoned across my t-shirt.

“The struggle itself
towards the heights is
enough to fill a man’s
heart. One must
imagine Sisyphus
happy.”

The pub was almost empty. Mid-morning on a rainy Monday. More than a little damp my tweed jacket was draped over the back of my chair at a table in the middle of the room. I placed my order, a half of Swift Best (3.4% ABV) named for MV Swift, largest of the boats that plies the tourist routes on Windermere.

We introduced ourselves. It was immediately clear John knew a lot more than I do about Camus in particular and philosophy in general. A long-time interest on his part I think, whereas I only encountered Camus a couple of years ago. I was unaware of the philosopher’s lifelong interest in football, for example. Fortunately, I knew enough of his theories and writings to hold my own in what developed into a lively and engaging discussion.

John recommended a book by English existentialist philosopher and novelist Colin Wilson, noting that nowadays he uses it as a footrest when playing guitar. He mentioned music a couple of times and I wish I’d asked him about it. It’s clearly an important part of his life, as writing is to mine. I believe the book John was talking about is Wilson’s The Outsider. (“Through the works and lives of various artists, including Kafka, Camus, Hemingway, Hesse, Lawrence, Van Gogh, Shaw, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, Wilson explored the psyche of the outsider, his effect on society and society’s on him.”) I’ve ordered myself a copy. As I don’t play guitar, I’ll probably read it.

Talk turned to Camus’ 1942 philosophical work The Myth of Sisyphus, from which my t-shirt quotation is taken. It was my introduction to the French-Algerian philosopher’s work. I know it well enough to have gleaned thoughts and ideas that resonate strongly with my own. Moving to Camus’ novels, I was happy we settled on the only one I’ve read in full. Published in 1942, the title of L’Étranger translates literally as “the foreigner” but the book has appeared in English editions as The Outsider (in the United Kingdom) and as The Stranger in the United States. It’s a dark tale but one I find compelling. I’ve read it in print, listened to it on audiobook, and watched an English-dubbed version of the 1967 Italian film Lo Straniero (The Stranger) directed by Luchino Visconti. John was unaware of the film and I was happy to recommend it to him.

Pausing our philosophical discussion, we touched on what had brought each of us to the Wateredge Inn that day. John was on a coach trip, though from where I don’t know. I shared that I was on vacation, staying a couple of miles away, and that I’d previously stayed in the Quaysiders Club apartments across the road and loved being able to walk to the pub of an evening. I mentioned it was one of my happy places and that I’ve blogged about it previously. I gave him a contact card with details of the blog and my social media accounts. I rarely have any cause to hand them out and was relieved to find a few in my wallet. John commented that as I’d written about happy places I could write about miserable places too. It’s an idea I might take up in the future.

He told me a story about a time he went to France with a group of friends. They stayed overnight somewhere in England — Seaford? — before crossing the Channel but everything went wrong and he hated the place because of it. In France, he met up with someone who spontaneously said of the same English town, “Oh I love that place!” We laughed and agreed it demonstrated the power of perspective. I’d add that our feelings about a place or situation are essentially arbitrary and can change — or be changed — in a moment.

This relates well to Camus’ theory of the absurd, which I summarised as a response to “mankind’s need to find meaning in a universe that doesn’t give a shit.” This seemingly bleak perspective is saved from nihilistic despair by recognising that we are free to find our own meaning and purpose. That day, for example. I’m no fan of heavy rain, but without it John and I wouldn’t have met. Likewise if I’d chosen a different t-shirt, stood further down the bar, or taken a phone call before ordering my drink. Serendipity? Happenstance? The universe doesn’t give a damn about my search for meaning or purpose, but I do. I choose to smile and call my life richer for meeting this stranger at the bar. My little bit of Camusian rebellion.

I could have stood talking with John for hours but at a certain point it felt right to bring the conversation to a close. We shook hands and I returned to my table, leaving John at the bar. A moment later, on a whim, I went back and asked for a photo and to confirm he was okay with me sharing it online. He was happy to agree. Later that day I posted the photo on social media with the following description.

This is John. We got chatting at the bar when he commented on my Albert Camus t-shirt. Brilliant conversation about Camus, his ideas and novels, other philosophers (of which John is far more knowledgeable than me), happy places, miserable places, expectations, blogging ... Thanks for the conversation, John. There’s a more than passing chance it will feature in a blog post in the none too distant future!

It led to a short discussion with my friend Cal regarding Camus’ L’Étranger and why The Outsider is a better English title than The Stranger. To be honest, I think both work, for different reasons. The principal character Meursault is certainly a societal outsider, unable to understand, relate to, or fake the responses considered appropriate by those around him. This is something I relate to, not least in his inability to express the expected level of grief at his mother’s death.

But the words strange and stranger are also highly relevant to the story, the latter both in the sense of increasingly strange and as someone you don’t know. Interestingly, the word “strange” appears just once in my English translation of the book. It’s elsewhere given as “queer” in the original sense of that word. At one point, Meursault refers to his own strangeness (queerness) and its impact on others. He’s talking here of his girlfriend Marie.

Then she said she wondered if she really loved me or not. I, of course, couldn’t enlighten her as to that. And, after another silence, she murmured something about my being “a queer fellow.” “And I daresay that’s why I love you,” she added. “But maybe that’s why one day I’ll come to hate you.”

To which I had nothing to say, so I said nothing.

The word is rendered as “strange” in Visconti’s 1967 film adaptation.

Then she said I that I was strange somehow and that she loved me because I was strange. But that maybe some day she would come to hate me for just that reason.

The story as a whole turns on Meursaut’s unpremeditated, almost accidental, murder of a man he’s never met before and knows nothing about. It occurs to me that John and I were no less strangers when we met at the bar of the Wateredge Inn than Meursault and the unnamed Arab he encountered on the beach of Algiers. The outcomes of the two meetings were, thankfully, very different.

I’m reminded of two quotations. The first is widely attributed to the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t met yet.” That’s very much how I feel about to my short encounter with John. The second is by Virginia Woolf from her novel The Waves.

Our friends – how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not.

This is a favourite of mine, reflecting as it does the essential strangeness of us all, even to those who believe they know us well. In all of this, there’s an echo of a conversation I had years ago in the toilet of a bar in Newcastle. The other guy instigated that conversation too, responding to what I had on my t-shirt at the time.

“So, where are your roots?”

It’s not every day you get asked a question like that in the gents’ toilet at Bar Loco. At least, it’s not every day I get asked that in the gents’ toilet at Bar Loco. Then again, I’m not there very often.

It was the t-shirt, of course. My American Roots t-shirt. Specifically, given I was standing at the urinal, the back of the shirt which asks WHERE ARE YOUR ROOTS? in sans serif caps.

Caught off-guard, mid pee, I stumbled for an answer. “Well,” I said, looking down at my chest. “I’m not American. The shirt is. It was a gift from my bestie in Maine. I’m from Liverpool.”

I can think of one more conversation with a stranger that was inspired by a t-shirt I was wearing. I was sitting in my then favourite coffee shop, Caffè Nero in Newcastle, before heading to a mental health event. A young guy at the next table noticed my t-shirt approvingly. “Fucking good shirt, man.”

All told, my conversation with John lasted no more than ten minutes, but it left me feeling invigorated. Proud of myself, even. It’s something I’ve rarely been able to do. Engage fully in conversation with someone I don’t know at all. John has my details if he wants to connect but if not, that’s fine too. The conversation itself was enough to fill this man’s heart.

PS: John, if you’re reading this, I wish you an absurd life!

 

Photo by Martin Baker at the Wateredge Inn, Ambleside, July 2025.

 

What On Earth? The Art of Confusion and the Usefulness of Nonsense

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

— Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

This post was inspired by a recent chat conversation with Fran. Apropos of nothing, she messaged me the following seven words.

Martin Camus cup straight out of HTLT

She’d found the entry in her calendar but couldn’t remember putting it there or what it signified. For several minutes, we tried to work it out. Fran thought the first three words might be a reminder to buy me a Albert Camus-related mug for my birthday. She knows I’m interested in the philosopher’s work, especially his doctrine of Absurdism. I have a Camus t-shirt and have blogged about him previously. Then again, Fran thinks of me as Marty not Martin, and why write cup instead of mug? HTLT refers to High Tide, Low Tide: The Caring Friend’s Guide to Bipolar Disorder but there’s no mention of Camus or philosophy in our book at all.

Something that is straight out of HTLT is the paradox of words and meaning. The following passage is excerpted from chapter 1 (“The Caring Friendship: Key Skills and Attitudes”).

When you think about it, it is amazing anyone manages to communicate anything meaningful at all. Each of us has our unique mix of thoughts and feelings, hopes, fears, joys, pains, plans, worries, and views about how the world works. We scarcely understand them ourselves, yet we hope to share them with someone who has their own mix to contend with. And the only tools we have are the sounds we can utter, and the marks we can make on paper or a computer screen. It is no wonder we struggle at times!

The question isn’t so much what do those seven words mean, but how do any of us convey meaning at all? Given the immensity of the challenge, the language we use matters. This is never more important than when discussing our lived experience. As a friend reminded me recently, certain words — for example survivor rather than victim in the case of people who have experienced rape, abuse, or trauma; or the appropriate diagnostic labels when discussing mental health — affect how we think about ourselves and relate to one another. There’s a great deal at stake. Communicating our experiences effectively can counter ignorance, stigma, and discrimination. The same friend shared with me a powerful quotation by Brené Brown: “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else’s survival guide.”

Fran and I were aware of this responsibility when writing our book. The Introduction includes a section on perspective and language. In it we described key terms and outlined our approach to the language of illness and wellness. It’s something I think about a lot when I’m blogging. But if it’s so important to use language carefully and clearly, what about nonsense? What’s the value of apparently contradictory, ridiculous, or paradoxical language? Why was I so excited at Fran’s cryptic calendar entry?

I’ve always loved puns and wordplay. I still recall my delight as a teenager when I discovered the poetry of American humourist Ogden Nash. This classic remains a favourite:

The Termite

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

An even shorter pest-related poem sometimes incorrectly attributed to Nash, is “Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes” (also known as “Fleas”) by Strickland Gillilan. It’s undeniably silly but I love it.

Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes

Adam
Had ’em

In my teen years I wrote silly poems for and about my school friends, recounting our exploits, foibles, and love lives (or lack thereof). I wish I’d kept copies of them. I’m not a fan of all nonsense poetry, however. Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There leaves me cold. The opening lines will suffice.

Jabberwocky

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
   And the mome raths outgrabe.

My distaste for Carroll’s wordplay is arguably because to me the poem is devoid of meaning. There’s no mystery, nothing to puzzle over or figure out. It’s not invitingly obscure, it’s a chaotic jumble of nonsense. More generally, I can’t abide what I’d describe as crass or contentless silliness. Slapstick comedy. Pantomime. A number of TV shows spring to mind, including Monty Python. Python’s humour might be “clever” but I could never engage.

In contrast, as a teenager I was greatly taken by the American poet and critic Ezra Pound. A collection of his poetry in the school library engaged me so much I neglected to return it when I left. As obscure — and arguably pretentious — as his writing can be, I felt there was profound wisdom and meaning there, if only it could be decoded.

Canto I

And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us out onward with bellying canvas,
Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.

As well as puns, intelligent silliness, and hidden meaning, I’ve always been fascinated by paradoxes and mind games. Amongst these I’d include Russell’s paradox (check out these videos by Up and Atom and Jeffrey Kaplan), infinite loop paradoxes (Tired Thinker), and Gödel’s incompleteness theorum (Veritassium and Numberphile). I’d also include Buddhist koans, although it’s not a topic I’m very familiar with. The following passage from 10 Buddhist koans, and why understanding them is pointless serves as a useful introduction.

Humans like to know what a sentence means. Sometimes we’ll go to great lengths to derive meaning from a group of words. More often than not, however, we’ll take the easiest possible route to understanding; the less neurologically taxing, the better. This opens the door to misunderstanding, yet it’s also how our brains are built. Spending time on sentences is the work of academics and poets, not commoners. Still, we all (hopefully) want to know what the other person is trying to convey. The koan is antithetical to such communication.

As in good politics and good philosophy, the koan was designed to inject “great doubt” into the adept’s mind. Koans are sometimes labelled “nonsensical,” though that misses the point. Logic is not the goal here. As renowned Sanbo Kyodan teacher, Philip Kapleau, writes, “the role of the koan is not to lead us to satori [enlightenment], but on the contrary to make us lose our way and drive us to despair.”

The article includes the familiar challenge, “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” Of the rest, this one resonates with me:

Question: Without speaking, without silence, how can you express the truth?

Response: I always remember springtime in southern China. The birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers.

As the article’s author points out, “Reading [these koans] on the screen is purely for curiosity’s sake. [...] ‘sitting with them’ is the real utility, though thinking you’ve ‘got’ them defeats the purpose.”

There’s a similar crisis of contradiction in the Absurdism of French philosopher Albert Camus, whose name features in Fran’s calendar entry. To the extent that I understand his ideas they accord with my own. As I’ve written previously, “We have an innate need to find meaning and value in our lives, but according to Camus, the search is futile because the universe itself is purposeless, meaningless, irrational, and utterly indifferent to our existence. Camus describes this as the paradox of the Absurd.” The koan-like absurdity is expressed in the closing lines of The Myth of Sisyphus, in which Camus uses the ancient tale of Sisyphus to stand for the human condition. Fated for eternity to push a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down again, Sisyphus is nevertheless able to find peace.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I have those words on a t-shirt. I wear it to remind myself of the paradox of searching for meaning in a universe devoid of any.

I’ll close with an account of the image I selected for this blog post. The sculpture of the word “what” on its low plinth works as a visual pun for the first three words of this post’s title, “What on earth?” That would have been enough, but a little investigation led me further. Created by KHBT, the sculpture was part of London’s Culture Mile trail in 2020. It’s the first of a series of sculptures which together form a quotation from Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room: “What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?”

The idea of following the word trail through the city echoes the way Fran and I attempted to make sense of her calendar entry, considering it one word at a time. We remain uncertain and perplexed. Likewise, the tourist is led not to an answer but to a question. The final scupture in the trail — the question mark — stands alone as an invitation to further exploration and adventure. There are no answers, the trail suggests, only more questions. This is something I’ve explored previously in The Future Will Be Confusing.

At this stage, I hope Fran and I never solve the mystery of her calendar entry. As I told her at the time, “No matter what the truth of this is, the fact that neither of us know what it means is even more exciting!”

 

Photo by Rhys Kentish at Unsplash.

 

Why Are You Here? Thoughts Inspired by "The Cafe on the Edge of the World"

This post is inspired by John Strelecky’s 2020 bestseller The Cafe on the Edge of the World: A Story About the Meaning of Life. Fran gifted me a copy for my birthday this year and we read it together. It led to some great conversations and I knew from the start I wanted to write about it. I’ll begin by quoting from the back cover blurb.

In a small cafe at a location so remote it stands in the middle of nowhere, John — a man in a hurry — is at a crossroads. Intent only on refueling before moving along on his road trip, he finds sustenance of an entirely different kind. In addition to the specials of the day, the cafe lists three questions all diners are encouraged to consider:

Why are you here?

Do you fear death?

Are you fulfilled?

The principal characters — naive traveller John, cafe owner Mike, and waitress Casey — reminded me of myself, Ellen, Kai, and their festival food stall in one of my short stories, Home Eleven. Strelecky’s didactic approach and emphasis on finding one’s life purpose recall a former favourite writer of mine; Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions, and The Bridge Across Forever.

I was less impressed by the writing itself, which in places struck me as awkward and repetitive. (Casey in particular does an awful lot of smiling.) This was perhaps more noticeable because I was reading the story aloud to Fran, rather than silently to myself. Deficiencies aside, we both found it an engaging read. We read the twenty-six short chapters at a rate of one a day. This gave us time to take on board the story as it unfolded and discuss the ideas it engendered. Early on, we asked each other how we’d answer the three questions. Fran went first.

Why are you here?
Because I love you.

Do you fear death?
No because there is no separation. I will live on in people’s hearts.

Are you fulfilled?
At this point in my life, yes. It feels like I stumbled into it, but I’ve done a lot of work to get here.

I’ll explore my answers in more detail below.

Why are you here?

I struggled massively with the first question. I had no idea how to approach it, not least because “Why are you here?” can be interpreted in various ways.

Why am I here (alive) at all?

Why am I still here (still alive)?

Why am I here, in this place at this time, as opposed to being somewhere else at some other point in time?

That last one is interesting given that Fran and I live on opposite sides of the Atlantic, three thousand miles and five timezones apart. We were nonetheless present on our video calls in the same moment, reading the book and pondering the questions it raised. My answers would be: because I am, because I’ve not died yet, because I’m not somewhere or somewhen else. These might seem disappointingly obvious and banal. They would not, I suspect, impress Mike or Casey. “Yes, Marty,” I can imagine them responding (Casey would be smiling). “But why?“ And that’s the sticking point for me. Because to ask why is to seek a purpose or reason. Indeed, the focus of the book is to help us — as Mike and Casey were attempting to help John — to discover and follow our PFE, our Purpose for Existing.

My problem isn’t that I’ve yet to find my PFE, although it’s true I’ve never had one. No purpose. No life plan. No grand path laid out for me to follow. It’s not even that I’ve been too distracted to seek one out. Strelecky makes a big deal of the dangers of losing oneself in the distractions of everyday life. These include marketing and advertising, and the inconvenience of working at any job or task that doesn’t directly serve your PFE. By extension, I suspect he’d include mainstream media, consumerism, western civilisation itself, and the Internet. I dare say I do allow myself to get distracted by these and other things. My main issue, though, is that I don’t believe such existential meaning or purpose exists, for me or anyone else. I’ll come back to this later.

Do you fear death?

Interestingly, the book scarcely touches on the second question, which I find far more straightforward. Of my own inevitable demise, I can answer simply and honestly; no. I might feel differently about it when the time comes but death isn’t something I’m afraid of. I don’t believe in an after-life, heaven or hell, reincarnation, or rebirth. Dying is the end of existing, of being. A dissolving, one might say, of the patterns of energy we embody. That said, the messiness of death unsettles me a great deal. By that I mean both the physical process of dying, especially where it’s protracted or lived in mental or physical pain, but also the societal aftermath of funerals, wills, the distribution and disposal of possessions, our personal legacy and such. It’s an important topic and one I want to explore more fully another time.

Are you fulfilled?

I struggle with this one for different reasons. I don’t recall exactly what I said to Fran but it would have been something along the lines of “if I knew what fulfilled means I’d have a go at answering it!” I wasn’t trying to be evasive. I’ve struggled all my life over the meanings of words, in particular those people use to label their feelings. It’s only recently that I learned there’s a name for this inability to express one’s emotions: alexithymia. If you’re interested to learn more, check out my two blog posts on the topic: How Do I Feel? and How Do I Feel Now?.

I struggle to say whether I’m fulfilled because I’m unsure at what level the question’s being asked. Am I somewhat fulfulled? Mostly? Totally? In this moment? At this phase in my life? Permanently? I’ve certainly felt less than totally fulfilled in the past. I think that’s because I’ve linked fulfillment to identifying and following the kind of life purpose I discussed earlier. If I had no PFE, no ultimate sense of meaning, calling, or vocation, how could I possibly be fulfilled? I see now that this is no less a form of social conditioning than those Strelecky denounces in his book. He decries the idea that we can attain meaning, success, and happiness by blindly following the dictates of consumerism and marketing, but replaces it with his own path to enlightemnent. Find your PFE, he asserts, and you too can be fulfilled. This is what I meant earlier when I said I had issues with the book generally.

In the past, I would have lapped it up as I did others at the time. Nowadays, whilst I concede the wisdom in some of the ideas — it’s valid to question where we are in life, what we want, and how we might move towards those goals — signaling you can do anything you set your mind to if you believe in yourself enough is naive at best. At worst, it’s ableist and stigmatising. I’m reminded of a meme I’ve seen on social media several times. I’ve been unable to trace the original author.

Shout-out to disabled people who aren’t “inspirational”, who are unemployed or stuck with a job they don’t like, who didn’t do well academically and/or had to drop out of school, who aren’t in a position to live and take care of themselves independently even if they would like to, who don’t “just get on with things without complaining”, whose lives didn’t work out in the way they were hoping for, who haven’t “overcome” their disability in the way that society tells us we’re supposed to. You exist, you’re worthwhile and you matter.

I’m not alone in feeling this way, as one Amazon reader makes clear in their review (“A thoughtful read but quite blind to privilege”).

More fundamentally, though, I no longer believe — if I ever truly did — in an ultimate Purpose for Existing for any of us. The very idea is absurd to me, in the sense of the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. I’ve explored Camus’ ideas previously in One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy. The universe exists, and we exist within it, devoid of meaning or purpose. And yet, undoubtedly, we are driven to seek both. Books such as The Cafe on the Edge of the World pander to this existential ache without addressing its futility. It’s possible that Strelecky addresses this elsewhere, Cafe being the first of several he’s written to worldwide acclaim. Despite my reservations, this book gave me plenty to think about and I’m grateful to its author and to Fran for bringing it to my attention. In different ways the three questions have helped to clarify my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about life as I‘m living it.

Why are you here?
To experience the process of living.

Do you fear death?
No.

Are you fulfilled?
My fulfillment is not dependent on identifying my ultimate purpose for existing. There is no such thing. I fill my days, my moments, in ways that are meaningful to me.

I’ll close with a moment of humour that occurred after Fran and I read chapter 15, which describes how advertising tells us we need this and that in order to be happy. “I just need my Marty,” Fran said. I smiled, remembering a recent purchase she’d made. “— and a skort!”

 

The Cafe on the Edge of the World: A Story About the Meaning of Life by John Strelecky is available at Amazon and all good booksellers. For more information, visit the author’s website.

If you’re interested in some of the other books Fran and I have read together, check out It’s Not Just for Kids: Reading Together for Fun and Friendship.

Photo by Shelby Cohron at Unsplash.

 

The Last of the Irish Rover: A Tribute to Shane MacGowan

Sad to say I must be on my way
So buy me beer and whiskey ’cause I’m going far away (far away)
I’d like to think of me returning when I can
To the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane

— Shane MacGowan, “Sally MacLennane”

This is written as a tribute to British-born Irish singer-songwriter and musician Shane MacGowan who died November 30, 2023 at the age of 65. I have no privileged knowledge or insight into the man’s life or work, indeed I knew little about him until recently. I want to focus on the impact Shane MacGowan has had on my life. His death has given me a great deal to think about in a number of areas, including political history, national identity, resilience, mental health, and addiction. If you’re interested in more, I’ve included a list of resources at the end of this article.

Fairytale of New York

I must declare up front that I was never into punk rock, though it broke onto the music scene in the mid-70s when I was in my teens. To the extent that I considered punk at all, I found it brash and uncouth. My tastes at the time stretched to Irish singer and songwriter Dana, Neil Sedaka, and The Wombles. My musical credentials established, I’ll begin with the one song everyone knows, whether they’re a fan of MacGowan and The Pogues or not: “Fairytale of New York.” There are so many great recordings but the one I love best is this live performance from 1998 with The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl. As many will know, Kirsty MacColl died under tragic circumstances in December 2000. Watching them perform together is all the more poignant since MacGowan’s death.

In the past few years the song took on some specific and personal resonances. I went so far as to learn the lyrics, should I ever be called upon to perform it in karaoke. (I wasn’t.) Singing those lines to myself until they became part of me taught me the raw brilliance of MacGowan’s writing.

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

— Jem Finer and Shane MacGowan, “Fairytale of New York”

Writing in The Independent in 2017, Roisin O’Connor called it “a drunken hymn for people with broken dreams and abandoned hopes.” I feel that captures the song’s spirit perfectly, and reflects its significance for me personally. Singing it loudly — if not quite drunkenly — on the streets of Newcastle is a memory I treasure. O’Connor’s article was republished in December 2013 following MacGowan’s death. One of the most moving versions of “Fairytale” is this performance by Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neil at Shane MacGowan’s funeral in St Mary of the Rosary Church in the small town of Nenagh in Co Tipperary, Ireland.

I’m rarely affected by the death of artists, actors, and celebrities. I don’t know why it was different this time, but the outpouring of love, loss, and appreciation at MacGowan’s passing caught me off guard. This man was clearly so much more than the co-writer and performer of the best Christmas song ever. I wanted to know more about him, and why his passing affected me so much.

Last year marked three decades of continuous service at my place of work. It was something of a wake-up call, leading me to consider the inevitability of my eventual demise. I’ve never given much thought to my death and funeral. I won’t be there, so why bother? I’ve come to realise that’s unfair to those I’ll leave behind, and have committed to addressing the basics at least. For certain, the event won’t be televised globally, as Shane MacGowan’s was. There’ll be no live band, dancing, or singing. No eulogies or readings by the likes of Nick Cave and Johnny Depp. No presidential attendees. My name and memory won’t be toasted in pubs and bars around the world. But what kind of legacy would I like? What do I deserve? As I wrote when considering my thirty years service, “these are questions for another day, but at least — at last — I’m asking them.” Unlikely as it might seem, Shane MacGowan is helping me ask them.

My first response to his death was to seek out other songs performed by The Pogues. (Fun fact: the band was originally called Pogue Mahone, an anglicisation of the Irish for kiss my arse.) I’ve linked a number of my favourites at the end of this piece, but I want to mention three in particular: “The Irish Rover,” “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” and “Sally MacLennane.”

The Irish Rover

I was blown away by the energy of “The Irish Rover,” as performed by The Pogues with Irish folk band The Dubliners. Credited to composer J.M. Crofts, the song tells the fantastic tale of The Irish Rover on her voyage from Ireland to America. The ship herself is magnificently if improbably equipped. It boasts thirty-seven masts and a cargo that includes “one million bags of the best Sligo rags, two million barrels of stone, three million sides of old blind horses hides, and four million barrels of bones.” Surviving calamities which at one point reduce the crew to two (“myself and the captain’s old dog”) the ship eventually founders, leaving the narrator as truly the last of The Irish Rover. The very different styles of the bands’ lead singers — Ronnie Drew for the Dubliners and MacGowan for the Pogues — complement each other perfectly. It’s a near flawless performance which deserves to be wider known.

It awakens in me a yearning only truly great folk music can inspire. Part of me wishes I could claim Irish, Welsh, or Scottish descent, because those nations seem to have more or less clearly defined national identities and sense of collective pride. That may be naive but it’s how it appears to me from outside. I’m British / English but I’ve never known that kind of rootedness. I’ve written of this before, in such posts as Like a Rootless Tree (Where Are Your Roots?), and Belonging (Longing to Be). Born in England to Irish parents, MacGowan was proud of his Irish republican ancestry. Former Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams delivered a reading at his funeral, which was also attended by Irish president Michael D. Higgins. His life and music have inspired me to become better informed about world history, especially the World Wars, the Middle-East, and the long and bloody history of Anglo-Irish politics.

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Written in 1972 by Scottish-born Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle, “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” tells the tale of a young Australian soldier who is maimed in the Gallipoli campaign in World War I. It carries huge significance for the ANZAC veteran community, and is a powerful expression of the futility of war.

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

There are many recordings of the song, including this one by Bogle himself, but for me this live version by The Pogues captures the pain and pointlessness of the conflict better than any. It inspired me to learn more about the courage of those who fell in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.

Sally MacLennane

It’s impossible to talk about MacGowan without addressing his long-term addiction to drugs and alcohol. Both are well documented. In an obituary piece in The New York Times Matt Phillips described MacGowan as “a titanically destructive personality and a master songsmith whose lyrics painted vivid portraits of the underbelly of Irish immigrant life.”

His wife, Victoria Clarke once stated that “his whole career has revolved around [drinking] and, indeed, been both enhanced and simultaneously inhibited by it.” There’s no denying the devastating effect addiction had on his life. It led to him being dismissed from The Pogues in 1991 due to the impact of drugs and alcohol on the band’s live performances. He was arrested in 1999 in London after being reported to the emergency services by Irish singer, songwriter, and activist Sinéad O’Connor. He later credited her intervention as helping him ultimately to beat his drug addiction. He was sober from around 2016 following treatment for a fall which fractured his pelvis. In 2004, Shane MacGowan told The Guardian that he’d been given six weeks to live, “about 25 years ago.” He outlived the prediction by more than forty years.

Alcohol and drink culture run through much of The Pogues’ repertoire. Another of my favourite songs, “Sally MacLennane,” was allegedly inspired by drinking sessions MacGowan had with friends in London before boarding the boat train home to Ireland. The title refers to a dry Irish stout brewed by Redlight Redlight Beer Parlour & Brewery. My favourite version is this live performance from 1985.

We walked him to the station in the rain
We kissed him as we put him on the train
And we sang him a song of times long gone
Though we knew that we’d be seeing him again

Sad to say I must be on my way
So buy me beer and whiskey ’cause I’m going far away (far away)
I’d like to think of me returning when I can
To the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane

The lyrics evoke the kind of drunken camaraderie I’ve scarcely experienced. (One session at the end of my final year at university is a possible exception.) I’ve never smoked, nor taken recreational drugs of any kind. That’s not to claim any moral superiority or willpower on my part. No one in my family smoked or drank more than occasionally. None of my school or university friends smoked. At university, I drank beer at the pub and white wine at parties. I occasionally got drunk but never considered it something to be proud of. I’ve been offered drugs once in my life, by a stranger within minutes of arriving with a friend at the Glastonbury Festival site in 1983. It was probably marijuana but neither of us were tempted or interested enough to ask. We declined, politely.

In more recent years, I’ve known a few people who smoke. Fran has occasionally self-medicated with alcohol and cigarettes. Our book recalls is a chat conversation from 2013, while Fran was on a very stressful three month road trip in Europe.

Martin: Tell me three things you want to accomplish today.

Fran: Charge my phone, smoke, breakfast, rest.. I will quit smoking on the boat home.. For now it helps take the edge off my stress..

Martin: The cigarettes are self-medication for stress? Like drink is for mania and depression?

Fran: Yeah.. I’m using them now to make it through hell..

Fran stopped smoking on her return home and reduced her drinking to social levels. She’s recently given up alcohol altogether. I consider myself fortunate never to have taken up smoking or drugs, or drinking excessively. I’m aware enough to recognise I might easily have become dependent if I’d been exposed to them. Fran was able to stop smoking and drinking without too much trouble but I’ve known other friends for whom smoking and other addictions have been far harder to address. I applaud and support anyone battling addiction and other compulsive behaviours, however they manifest.

I’m reminded of other artists I admire whose lives have been affected by addiction. The first to come to mind is Amy Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning in 2011. Performing as RØRY, Roxanne Emery is another. I wrote of my love of her music last year in a post which also discussed German band AnnenMayKantereit. In an interview for Underground Emery said, “I got sober in 2018, and then a load of therapy in 2020 when I realised being sober was HARD. I processed a lot of trauma, from the death of my mother at 22, to the dysfunctional dynamics and addictions in my family.”

Shane MacGowan, the Absurd Man

I recently explored my response to the philosophy of Albert Camus. Specifically, his approach to the existential absurdity of seeking meaning and purpose in a universe that offers neither. For me, MacGowan exemplifies Camus’ Absurd Man better than anyone I can think of. This may seem presumptuous, if not ridiculous, but it’s not the first time parallels have been drawn between punk and existentialism. In Existentialism as Punk Philosophy Stuart Hanscomb identifies a common spirit of rebellion. “Punk is music that is anti-music,” he declares. “Existentialism is a philosophy that is anti-philosophy.”

Rebellion is a central theme in Camus’ work. In The Myth of Sisyphus he asserts “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” It’s hard not to think of MacGowan when you read those words. The following is from a tribute piece in The Guardian by Sean O’Hagan titled “Chaos? This is natural living!” The genius of Shane MacGowan.

More than anyone else I have ever met, he lived entirely in the moment, the eternal present as he understood it, inextricably linked to an altered state of consciousness: alcoholic, chemical or hallucinogenic.

O’Hagan recalls a conversation with MacGowan which is especially pertinent to Camus.

“I believe in the dignity of the human soul,” [Shane] once told me, when asked about his spirituality. “People who can put up with incredible hardship and still not be depressed, still enjoy themselves.”

This is the essence of the Absurd Man. Condemned by the gods to forever push a boulder to the top of a mountain, only for it to roll down again, Sisyphus finds a way to escape the futility and hopelessness of his situation. Camus writes:

Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

We must likewise imagine Shane MacGowan happy. Certainly he drank deeply of life. I’m reminded of the poem “And Thus in Nineveh” by Ezra Pound.

“It is not, Raana, that my song rings highest
Or more sweet in tone than any, but that I
Am here a Poet, that doth drink of life
As lesser men drink wine.”

I’ve no idea if MacGowan knew of Pound’s work, but it’s an epitaph of which he might have approved. There’s a wonderful YouTube video on Camus titled Absurdism. How to Party at the End of Meaning. Its irreverent and engaging narration ends as follows:

Absurdism isn’t an answer to the mysteries of life, why bad things happen, where the universe came from or how to survive this shit. It’s just asking the question, oh god what if we never achieve final explanations, what if we never see the big picture, what if we go our whole lives without ever having known what it was all about, and replying to oneself — oh look, it’s a puffin! It’s a nice puffin. It’s a nice day. Oh, we’re alive. That’s unprecedentedly weird and cool, whether it’s fully explained or not. Let’s go for a beer.

In this piece I’ve explored aspects of Shane MacGowan’s life and work as they resonate for me. I hope I’ve brought an awareness of his genius — and flaws — to others who, like me until very recently, knew him only as the front man in a punk band who sang that song about Christmas. I hope I’ve shown there was much much more to the man, his music, and his life. At the end of that life, he was and remains loved and feted by millions. Absurd or not, that’s a life well-lived.

I’ll close with a quotation from author Neil Gaiman’s charge to artists everywhere (which is to say, all of us) in his commencement address at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.

Now go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

Shane MacGowan more than met that charge. The onus is on us to do the same.

 

Further Reading and Listening

The following links are provided for anyone wanting to further explore the life and works of Shane McGowan.

Books

A Drink with Shane MacGowan by Shane MacGowan and Victoria Mary Clarke

A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan by Richard Balls

Articles

Shane MacGowan (Wikipedia)

Victoria Mary Clarke on her husband Shane MacGowan

“Chaos? This is natural living!” The genius of Shane MacGowan

Fairytale of New York

Fairytale of New York (Wikipedia)

Fairytale of New York lyrics

Fairytale of New York Official video

Fairytale of New York with Kirsty MacColl 1998

Fairytale of New York The Pogues and Ella Finer

Fairytale of New York played at Shane MacGowan’s funeral (Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill)

Other Songs and Performances

Spancil Hill (Shane MacGowan and Christy Moore)

The Rare Old Mountain Dew (The Dubliners and The Pogues)

The Irish Rover (The Dubliners and The Pogues) The Late Show 1987

Sally MacLennane (album version)

Sally MacLennane (Live)

And the Band Played Walzing Matilda (Live)

And the Band Played Walzing Matilda (Eric Bogle)

A Rainy Night in Soho (Live)

A Pair of Brown Eyes (Live)

 

Photo 185240628 | Shane MacGowan in concert. Milan, Italy. June 2009. © Fabio Diena | Dreamstime.com

 

One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy: Encounters With the Absurd Man

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
— Albert Camus

TW: Mention of suicide

A few weeks ago I completed thirty years’ continuous service at work. As l described at the time, “[t]he experience left me feeling demotivated. Demoralised. More than anything else, I felt sad. Thirty years working for essentially the same employer — and in essentially the same role — doesn’t feel much of an achievement to me. It feels like what happens when you never pushed yourself to find something better.” I used the word “pushed” in that final sentence without giving it much thought. It’s acquired greater significance in the period since, as I’ve pondered some of the questions my three decades of service brought up. Questions like what is my purpose? What am I supposed to be doing with my life? Is this all there is?

As age-old and ultimately unanswerable they may be, these are questions worthy of investigation. Last year I came across a series of video lectures by philosophy professor Jeffrey Kaplan. I was especially interested in those dealing with logical paradoxes, and matters of ethics. (I highly recommend Kaplan’s lecture on Peter Singer, Ordinary People Are Evil.) I began reading — or rather, listening and watching — more widely. Nihilism intrigued me, but felt too austere. Somewhere in my philosophical travels I came across Albert Camus and Absurdism. I moved on without fully engaging with either the man or his ideas, but the seed had been sown. I chanced on him again a few weeks ago, and something clicked into place. I’ve been exploring his writing and work in some detail since then.

I can’t give more than a superficial account of Camus and his ideas, but I’ll do my best to describe what I’ve learned and why I find his thinking so engaging. I’ve included links at the end of this piece for anyone who wants to find out more.

The Nature of the Absurd

We have an innate need to find meaning and value in our lives, but according to Camus, the search is futile because the universe itself is purposeless, meaningless, irrational, and utterly indifferent to our existence. Camus describes this as the paradox of the Absurd. I found a modern expression of this idea in a quotation by Richard Dawkins, from his book River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life.

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

This resonates. The idea of a non-human meaning or purpose to the universe has never made sense to me. It simple is and it’s for us to ascribe a meaning to it if we wish. That doesn’t mean I always find it easy. I’ve never been suicidal, but I often feel unfulfilled and adrift. The following is drawn more or less at random from my personal journal.

Feeling flat. Not wanting to do anything special or different. What’s the point, really? What difference does it make what I do today?

I’m hardly unique in this. I talk regularly with people who share thoughts and feelings like these. Some border on hopelessness, despair, and suicidality. Some are the product of, or exacerbated by, anxiety, depression, trauma, or other conditions and life events. Camus’ assertion that there’s no ultimate meaning might appear unhelpful or even dangerous. To me, though, the logic of Absurdism is reassuring, even comforting. It assures me that these thoughts and feelings are neither wrong nor pathological. They’re the natural consequence of the situation in which we find ourselves. Camus describes three ways of responding to this existential challenge: philosophical suicide (faith or belief), physical suicide, and acceptance.

Faith

Not everyone agrees that the universe is chaotic and devoid of meaning, of course. I have friends who would count themselves as religious, spiritual, or both, and draw strength and purpose from their faith. I respect this as I respect them, but I’ve never felt my needs would be satisfied by adherence to any doctrinal system. I went to church in my teens, but since leaving home at eighteen I’ve only attended for weddings and funerals. The last occasion was my mother’s funeral in 2018. My father, at least occasionally, yearned to share my mother’s Christian faith, but it wasn’t in him and I respect him for that. The following is from an open letter I wrote to my father, many years after he died.

I know you didn’t share Mum’s religiosity. Her churchgoing. Her faith. I recall one conversation between you. You telling her you wished you could believe. It’s the one time you let the mask slip. The one time I remember seeing you cry.

In the end, my mother’s faith turned against her, twisted by doubt and mental illness into crippling guilt and despair from which she never recovered. For Camus, faith amounted to philosophical suicide. He saw it as an attempt to escape the dilemma by devoting oneself to a religion, cause, or movement that claims to provide the structure and meaning we seek. This seemed to him intellectually dishonest. I wish I had half the courage, wit, and erudition of such modern atheists as the late Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Stephen Fry, but I can use the voice and platform I have, and share what the Absurd means to me. In doing so, I’m discovering more about myself, my life, and my purpose. That feels important.

It’s worth saying that not all existentialists considered religion an invalid response to the crisis of meaninglessness. That includes Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, generally considered the first existentialist philosopher. Camus repudiated the label of existentialist, but is generally counted amongst their number.

Suicide

The question of suicide is foundational for Camus. In the opening chapter of his book The Myth of Sisyphus, he declares “[t]here 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.” I find something brutally refreshing in this. I’ve had many conversations with Fran and other friends about suicide and suicidal thinking. I’ve taken suicide awareness and prevention courses. Fran and I have a chapter on suicidality in our book. But I’ve never looked at suicide from a philosophical perspective before .

There was a time when I could discern a certain romantic tragedy in suicide born of extreme suffering. I remember being moved reading of the death by suicide of the English painter Dora Carrington in 1932 following the loss of her beloved friend Lytton Strachey. The final entry in her journal included the following couplet from Henry Wotton’s poem “Upon the Death of Sir Albert Morton’s Wife.”

He first deceased; she for a little tried | To live without him, liked it not, and died.

With hindsight and greater understanding, I focus much more on the loss her death represented for the people who loved her, yet were unable to help her survive the despair in which she found herself.

To be clear, Camus explicitly rejects the idea of taking one’s life as a legitimate response to the crisis of meaninglessness. He sees it as avoiding the paradox by taking oneself out of life altogether, rather than finding a solution to it. This counters any romanticisation of suicide, but there remains a danger in taking Camus’ views at face value. It would be easy to conclude that suicide is in some way cowardly or selfish; an easy way out for those unable or unwilling to challenge the Absurd in other ways. I don’t see it that way at all. I’ve read that for those bereaved by suicide no response or feelings are invalid, but I can’t agree with those who judge the actions of those they’ve lost as weak or selfish. I once told Fran that if she ever chose to leave, I would not hate her for it. That hasn’t changed.

Camus speaks about a certain kind of suicidality, but suicidal thinking, and suicide itself, are too deep, desperate, and messy to be fully explained or countered by any single philosophical theory. That said, I believe a wider awareness and understanding of philosophy would help address the loneliness and alienation many of us feel, especially when we’re unable or unwilling to subscribe to consensus views and attitudes. The breadth and variety of philosophical thought teaches us — teaches me — that there’s no one route to truth, and no single way of living genuinely. I find that profoundly validating. We’re not wrong or bad for thinking differently, seeing the world through our own eyes, or seeking meaning in ways that work for us.

Sisyphus and the Absurd Man

I mentioned Sisyphus earlier but who is he and what’s his relevance to Camus’ thinking? Sisyphus was the king of Ephyra (Corinth) in Greek mythology. As I expressed it recently to a friend, he was punished by the gods for being “a bit cheeky” — which is something of an understatement. His full story is worth reading, but it’s the nature of his final punishment that’s relevant here. In Camus’ words:

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labour.

It’s not hard to see this as an analogy for the repetitive, tedious, and seemingly endless drudgery of modern life. It’s captured perfectly in a meme which began as a post on Twitter/X by Kramski.

I love how being an adult is just saying “But after this week things will slow down a bit again” to yourself until you die.

Sisyphus is the model for what Camus calls the Absurd Man; someone who exemplifies the appropriate response to the paradox of meaninglessness. The following summary is is taken from The Absurd Man by James Clark Ross.

The absurd man lives for his passions. He exists here and now, hoping for no more than what he’s been given. Though he abandons meaning, he is determined to live in the present and takes this perspective forward with him over the course of his life.

Yet the absurd man revolts against his very existence. He sees death as finality: there is no place for God. Nor is there any other source of intrinsic value to justify his existence in this world, nor a way to have consequence in another. The absurd man is torn from his urge to find unity.

But the absurd man is at least able to face the absurdity of his life squarely; for he accepts his own obscurity. In so doing, in renouncing the various falsities of hope, the absurd man finds freedom.

I find much here that reflects how I’ve lived my life. It makes sense to me. But what does it mean in practice? How is the Absurd Man — the Absurd Person — supposed to live?

Acceptance: The Third Way

Having set physical and philosophical suicide aside, what does Camus offer as a way through the dilemma of the Absurd? In a word, acceptance. Acceptance of the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves, and the determination to nevertheless live fully, relying on our courage, inventiveness and spirit to find a personal sense of meaning and purpose. Camus gives three examples of the Absurd Man, which he labels the lover, the actor, and the warrior, but it’s up to us to figure things out for ourselves. I recommend the excellent twenty minute video 7 Life Lessons from Albert Camus on the Philosophies for Life YouTube channel. It describes seven approaches to help us appreciate the Absurdity of life.

1. Create your own meaning for life
2. Don’t make happiness a distant goal
3. Don’t be ignorant
4. Be a rebel
5. Spend time with yourself
6. Be flexible
7. Choose love

These are all important and I encourage you to watch the video in full, but I’ll touch on four that seem especially relevant to me: creating your own meaning, being a rebel, spending time with yourself, and not making happiness a distant goal. The quoted sentences are from the video narration.

Create your own meaning for life

No one is watching you. You are absolutely free to choose how your life will be.

I’ve written elsewhere about how important it is to acknowledge and celebrate our successes, whether or not they fit society’s model of what achievement should look like, or what others expect of us. Camus invites us to make our own choices about what matters for us, because ultimately no one and nothing else can do that for us.

Be a rebel

It’s important to know yourself in order to know when to rebel.

This can be interpreted in different ways, but essentially it means having the courage to say no when we need to. It’s about not accepting prescribed or expected norms if they don’t sit well with us. This could be seen as a rejection of morality and a licence to do anything we want to with no regard to other people, but Camus stresses the importance of balancing the freedom of being who you are with a strong sense of justice for others. The challenge is to act authentically rather than merely following the accepted or easy way. This means understanding who we actually are.

Spend time with yourself

Solitude makes it possible for you to meditate on the absurdity of life.

Time to myself has always been an important part of my life, whether it’s taking myself for a walk, meditating, keeping up with my diary as I’ve done every day for almost fifty years, or sitting in coffee shops to write my weekly blog post. The value of taking even short opportunities for solitude can’t be overstated. It’s in these moments that we can be most truly ourselves and explore our relationship with the Absurd.

I also spend a lot of time listening to and watching YouTube videos. I’m fascinated with cosmology and mathematics, especially anything to do with the scale and origins of the universe, incomprehensively large numbers such as Graham’s number and Tree 3, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, Turing machines, and Russell’s paradox. Topics such as these speak to me of the urgent and fascinating, yet ultimately pointless urge to seek for understanding.

Don’t make happiness a distant goal

The more we can enjoy the process of achieving our goals, the happier we become.

Many people live and work towards future goals, setting aside any appreciation of the journey they are on in getting there. This may not cause any issues with relatively short-term goals. We can press on through the hardship and drudgery until we get there. For longer term goals and aspirations, however, we miss out on so much if we fail to appreciate where we are along the way. A need to be always pushing on towards the next goal means we are never happy with where we are or what we have achieved. We probably all know someone who never seems content with what they have, but is always looking for the next experience, relationship, or acquisition, believing that then they will be happy and at peace. The way out of this dilemma is to learn to find value in the journey, worrying less about what we our journeying towards.

There are no goals or aspirations for Sisyphus. He knows he is condemned to push his boulder up the hill for eternity. Likewise, it sometimes seems to us that there’s no possibility of escape or change in our future, and we’re going to be stuck where we are forever. If we allow ourselves to be lost in the seeming impossibility of change, we can lose hope altogether. If we imagine our life will only have meaning if it changes in specific desired ways, we will be mired in despair. The lesson we can take from Sisyphus — at least as Camus’ presents him — is to become fully aware of the present moment and find happiness there. Find meaning there. As he writes in the closing lines of The Myth of Sisyphus, we must imagine Sisyphus happy.

This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

So, to return to the beginning of this piece and my reflections on my life so far, I’ll keep pushing on. Like Sisyphus I’ll make the most of each step along the way, allowing the struggle to fill my heart. In doing so, I can imagine myself happy.

Further Information

Existential Psychology: Camus (Eric Dodson lectures)

Albert Camus (Life and works)

7 Life Lessons from Albert Camus (video)

The Myth of Sisyphus (video)

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (book)

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (audio book)

The Stranger (video) 1967 film by Italian film director Luchino Visconti, based on Albert Camus’ 1942 novel The Stranger.

 

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash. Sculpture by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland in Frogner Park, Oslo.