

― Albert Camus “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Essentially stoic, Albert Camus. This great philosopher, writer of The stranger, a book that depicts the absurd, lovely term. It is absurd to live, tell me please an answer that does not sound absolutely absurd! It’s impossible. Life is so incredibly strange that we have to go about it not really asking us any questions.

But there comes a time in every man’s life where the questions begin to emerge and it is during those times that true meaning starts to blossom.

What questions exactly? Well, it is one thing to ask yourself what you want to be when you grow up, and say that you want to be a fireman, but if I ask you why, then it gets really fun. So, I ask you why and you tell me that you want to save other people’s lives, and that is truly noble! So then I ask you why do you want to save people’s lives and then you tell me that it is what good people do, and then I tell you why is it that you want to be good? And by this question I would feel that you are getting pretty annoyed. What I want to show, is that there are no ultimate answers, there will always be a why that takes us further into the depths of philosophy.

I don’t know about you but I can question and answer why’s all day, I believe it makes a really good conversation. But, we have to live so we must know at least how to do it as best as we can.

There are a few things that would be better to know than not to know however, like stoicism.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

― Albert Camus

Camus argues that happiness will never be found through questioning ourselves.

In the phrase just mentioned above, however, he said that knowing of the summer he had within, made him happy , interesting?

Where is he getting at? What exactly is that thing that pushes back, that endless summer? and that happens to give him happiness as well?

Here, Camus depicts himself as a stoic, for that endless summer is what the stoics admire the most, virtue. Virtue is concerned with acting correctly, but how do we know what a correct action is?

I believe that is a terribly hard question,but if we are to live our lives without questioning a lot we should know a few things first, so we can live more easily like knowing what we can control from what we can’t.

We have to live, now, live immediately and questioning a lot ourselves is hard, this is why I put together this two particular phrases of Camus.

If we want to live now and without doubt, we need to live with self trust, in that silence, in that endless summer is where the answers lie, quiet answers. That space where virtue emerges, where self discipline is formed and where love springs. That invisible summer knows the answers, and although sometimes it’s difficult to know what to do, trusting that inner giant will surely light the way. Trust yourself.

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