Albert Camus is one of the greatest French writers and thinkers.

He was a philosopher, an author and a journalist.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and his most famous works are The Stranger,

The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.

Camus is one of the most representative figures of the philosophy of the “absurd” or “absurdism,”

which is a philosophical movement having as its central hypothesis that human beings exist

in a purposeless, chaotic universe.

Albert Camus is sometimes referred to as an existentialist, but he rejected this term

throughout his life, because he wanted to distance himself from the existentialism of

Sartre.

Camus considered that absolute freedom must be balanced with absolute justice - too much

freedom leads to the situation when the strong suppresses the weak but too much justice kills

freedom, and we need to live and let live, while Sartre considered freedom as a constant

given, that humans are condemned to be free and that it is possible to achieve social

and political freedom and justice at the same time, without compromise.

As a promoter of the philosophy of the “absurd”, Camus believed that life has no meaning, that

the universe simply exists and that it is indifferent to people’s lives.

We are like Sisyphus from Greek mythology, forever carrying that heavy rock to the top

of the hill, although we know the rock will always fall down and our life's work is meaningless.

Our condition might be tragic, but Camus considered that this exact condition hides a blessing

in disguise: life does not have a meaning, but we are free to attribute it any meaning

we want.

His philosophy has inspired a lot of people in dealing with the absurdity of life and

even today, his philosophy is extremely relevant, which is why in this video we bring you 7

life lessons from Albert Camus which can help us appreciate the absurdity of life:

1) Create your own meaning for life Camus says “You will never live if you are

looking for the meaning of life.”

According to the philosophy of the absurd, life is meaningless, man’s existence is

absurd as there is no justification for it.

Regarding the meaninglessness of life, Camus seems close to Arthur Schopenhauer.

However, Camus is different because he considered that human beings have the power to create

their own meaning of life, while Schopenhauer didn’t consider that life can have a meaning

at all - that life is suffering and human beings are driven by a powerful and invisible

force called the Will - and we don’t actually have any control over it.

Camus believed that human values do not have a solid external component.

Everything is man-made and Camus proposes three ways to deal with the absurdity of life:

suicide, faith or acceptance.

Suicide and faith are irrational escapes from addressing the contradiction between the human

desire for meaning and the indifference of the universe.

By suicide, the person removes the physical form that was in charge of finding the life’s

meaning and, without the human mind, the absurd cannot exist.

Through faith, the human being embraces irrationality and arrives at a certain concept regarding

life’s meaning which defies rationality.

Camus also considered faith a type of suicide, namely a philosophical suicide, because faith

defies rationality, irrationality being the opposite of a philosophical argument.

After removing suicide and faith as acceptable ways to address the absurd, the only thing

which remains is acceptance.

Acceptance leads to individual freedom, you can create new meanings and you can even create

yourself.

Acceptance is in essence Camus’ core belief in how someone should live their life.

The sooner you accept that life has no absolute meaning and that it is only you who has the

power to create its meaning, the sooner you can become free and only from that point can

you really start to live your life.

There is no absolute meaning of life, the meaning of your life is different to the meaning

of somebody else’s.

To apply this lesson in your life, you should stop thinking that your life must be in this

or that particular way, that you need to become a doctor or you need to make a certain amount

of money per year, or that you need to have so-and-so many children.

Instead, you should delete all of these stories and consider that no one is watching you,

that you are absolutely free to choose how your life will be.

Your life has the meaning that you give to it and you can change this meaning at any

point.

For example, if you spent the last 10 years working in a bank and life now feels boring,

you might get stuck looking for the meaning of life in earning more and more money, in

making your parents proud, or in making your colleagues and friends envious of you.

But most likely this is not a meaning you chose, rather you got this meaning through

your life circumstances; you didn’t choose it.

But it is you who can always turn your life around: you can start over, redefine your

own meaning, maybe this time you might choose to explore the world, to change your career,

to be a travel writer and moving from country to country, leaving behind your previous banking

career.

You never have to live your life in a pre-prescribed way; it can be whatever you choose.

2) Don’t make happiness a distant goal According to Camus: “The struggle itself

toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

What most of us crave above all else is 'security', the feeling that we are, at last, safe.

We pin our hopes for security on a shifting variety of goals: a happy relationship, a

house, children, a good profession, respect, a certain amount of money and so on.

When these become ours, we think, we will finally be at peace.

But happily ever after is not a realistic goal, we are never satisfied with the things

we get, we will always want more.

The more we chase for the things we believe we want, often the more unhappy we become.

The secret is to learn to enjoy the process and to not mind so much about the goals.

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

goals can even start becoming irrelevant.

As Camus said, we need to imagine Sisyphus as being happy.

In the myth, Sisyphus is punished by the gods and sentenced to make him climb a rock to

the top of a mountain only to see it fall, over and over again.

This can be seen as an analogy for modern life.

Given these conditions, there is only one way to be happy: to focus more on the process,

on the joy of climbing the rock to the top and to not worry about the fall.

In the same way, we can learn to become happy in our daily life.

For example, if you are a student and your goal is to graduate, instead of imagining

yourself happy at the end of the university program with your diploma in your hand, it

is better to make yourself love the process of learning, of going to school, meeting your

colleagues, debating the class and so on.

Do not wait for the moment you reach your goals to be happy, that moment of happiness

is too short anyway; so rather you should learn to be present in the moment.

3) Don’t be ignorant Camus tells us: “The evil that is in the

world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as

malevolence if they lack understanding.”

Albert Camus lived at the beginning and during the middle of the 20th century, he had a tumultuous

life and he senses that the world is in need of a new and simpler morality, based on fairness

and team spirit.

He was in France when the German tanks reached Paris during World War 2.

He couldn’t fight as a soldier during the war because of his physical condition, but

he fought with his pen, he joined the French Resistance and all his life he wrote on the

behalf of the oppressed and against the authoritarian regimes.

During his lifetime, he did face evil and he came to the conclusion that the root of

all the evil in this world is ignorance.

In other words, the man with the right information and knowledge would always choose to do no

harm to others.

We live in an interconnected world and we are social beings, therefore no man with enough

intelligence would choose to harm others, as the harm would come back to him eventually.

The morality of absurdism is very much rooted in empathy and the practical aspects of life,

having a lot to do with fraternity between people and the application of fairness principles.

We need to get informed before judging any action of another.

Also, we need to learn to take things less personally, not every attack against us is

because of us, maybe somebody else hurt that person and that person doesn’t know how

to deal with their own emotions and the only way we can break this vicious cycle of hate

is by refusing to continue the hate.

For example, imagine your spouse coming back home from work and getting angry at you for

something very small, like why you forgot to take out the trash in the morning.

Instead of replying back with the same anger, you should reply calmly and also try to get

more information.Perhaps ask what happened in their work and what bothered them today.

Being ignorant to other people and taking everything personally would be highly damaging

to all relationships in your life.

Therefore, try to get more knowledge about the lives of others and the emotions they

go through, and try to break the cycles of hate.

4) Be a rebel To quote Camus: “I rebel; therefore I exist.”

In the vision of Albert Camus, a rebel is someone who learned to say no.

We need to get rid of the desire to please others, because we would waste our life otherwise.

We have only one life to live and we need to live it more authentically.

As an avid reader of Nietzsche, Camus considered that life must be lived fully, in a free way,

that we need to create our own values and learn to be more in the present.

Also, we should not be satisfied in just following a standard way of living, we need to try unexplored

paths in life and have more courage to rebel against traditional values.

However, Camus differentiated himself from Nietzsche, Camus stood for a balance between

freedom and justice and he didn’t embrace the irresponsible freedom preached by Nietzsche.

But, nevertheless, he was seduced by the Nietzschean call for authenticity and for the courage

to break with the traditional norms.

Your freedom to be who you are and express yourself is too precious to be traded for

money or for a higher status in society.

It would make you feel unhappy and would add stress to your life, affecting you mentally

and even physically.

Give yourself the space to create something new instead of trying to be what everyone

expects you to be.

To be alive means to rebel.

Because we are all different, what was once good for somebody, may be no good for you

at all, today.

So it is important to know yourself in order to know when to rebel.

For example, imagine you are given a new job, to manage a small team in a company.

The previous manager was holding meetings regularly, maybe 3 times per week, to make

sure everybody is following the rules.

Let’s consider you are a person who hates meetings, considering them a complete waste

of time because nothing gets done and people don’t even take notes most of the time.

Therefore, knowing who you are, you should decide to rebel against this tradition.

You should talk to your superior and tell them that you want to implement a new type

of management, with at least one quick catch-up chat per day with each member, as one-on-one

conversations are always much more effective, because you can ask much more direct questions

and be very specific, while in a meeting, there is a lot of time wasted with introductions

and pleasantries, plus people tend to be less direct and authentic in a meeting room compared

to an one-on-one conversations.

With that in mind, you should try to push your way in life.

It will be much more rewarding in the long run than following the traditional ways of

doing things blindly.

5) Spend time with yourself As Camus so succinctly put it: “Solitude,

a luxury of the rich.”

Throughout his writings Camus discusses loneliness, despair and themes of being alone.

In today’s world, we live in crowded cities, we travel in crowded buses and trains and

only the rich have the chance to buy luxury cars, or can afford to live in spacious houses,

set apart from the world.

Even when you work from home, if you are not rich enough, you may well have to share your

living space with other people.

Therefore, the surest way to live in solitude is to have enough money to afford to live

alone, to travel alone, to work alone, and to spend your holidays on private beaches

instead of crowded shores.

Money can buy you solitude, although it doesn’t buy you an absurd life.

However, solitude makes it possible for you to have enough time with yourself to meditate

on the absurdity of life, to find out that life has no meaning but the one you give it.

There are many ways out there to get rich, but it is equally common for rich people to

be so stressed out because of their businesses that they don’t have time for themselves.

Therefore, it is important to cultivate a habit of finding a window of time during your

day in which you can be by yourself.

For example, instead of lunching with your colleagues during the work day, you can opt

for a sandwich to enjoy while wandering in a small park beside your office.

Or you can wake up one hour earlier to enjoy the sunrise and meditate on the absurdity

of life before your family awakes.

Solitude might be a luxury for the rich, but we can sneak solitary moments into our routine,

no matter our income.

6) Be flexible In the words of Camus: “Blessed are the

hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”

In Camus’ view, it is very important to be flexible and tolerant in life.

Flexibility doesn’t just help us in dealing with heartbreaks of romantic relationships,

but also in facing some of the world’s biggest tragedies, including war.

The one who can survive in extreme situations is the one who can adapt the best, according

to the theory of evolution itself.

Also, some scientists even consider that flexibility is at the heart of human intelligence.

Aron Barbey, Professor of Psychology at The University of Illinois proposed that the brain’s

dynamic properties drive human intelligence.

Making smart decisions, adapted to the circumstances, can prevent our heart from being totally broken

and, in time, we can heal.

Camus learned this from his own life experience, when he faced the terror of World War II,

when he confronted the stubbornness of his communist associates from whom he later separated,

the clashes between the French colonial forces and the Arabs in Algeria, and so on.

He learned that decisions can be tough and what was a good approach for one situation

may not be for another, that the world is always changing and we need to adapt to new

circumstances.

We should open our eyes to what is in front of us, be more compassionate towards others

and show more empathy.

Flexibility is a very important skill in every field, including our relationships.

Change is inevitable and, in order for a relationship to grow, it is very important that both partners

adapt to the changes.

For example, if you don’t have a job because you are looking for the perfect one and your

partner has just lost theirs, then you might try to lower your expectations and accept

any job you can get in order to assure a comfortable life for both of you.

For the sake of the relationship, it is better to be flexible and find ways to solve the

problems even if it means compromising your career goals.

If you were stubborn in this situation, you would not only put your finances at risk,

but also your relationship.

7) Choose love In our final quote from Albert Camus for this

video, he says: “Nothing in life is worth turning your back on, if you love it.”

Albert Camus was a womanizer, having multiple affairs with different women.

He married his first wife to save her from her drug addiction just to find out later

that she was cheating on him with her doctor.

In time, Camus developed a very libertarian view over romantic love and he often seemed

to choose love over commitment.

However, he was at the same time a very tolerant and gentle person, having regrets when his

second wife went through a severe depressive episode due to his cheating and,so, at the

end of his life, he focused more on his wife and children.

He valued love above all and he considered that love is our only duty in life.

Often, love puts us in extreme situations and we might have to choose between love and

being moral like falling in love with somebody married or when we are married and we fall

for somebody else.

According to Camus, when love clashes with this sense of duty or commitment, then it

is love we should listen to.

It might also not be worthy to stay in a marriage where there is no love.

Love is an act of rebellion and it is the force of life, giving us a shield of protection

against being broken by the absurd.

To apply this lesson in our life, we need to live more in the present, to learn to express

our love for other people more often, without pondering too much about what the future will

bring to those relationships.

For example, if you have a high paid job and you travel in a business trip to a distant

country and you meet there somebody you fall in love with, but you must come back to your

home country due to your contract, then you should take a leap of faith and find ways

to remain there, even quitting your job.

Nothing in life is worth turning your back on, if you love it.

If you enjoyed this video, please make sure to check out our full Philosophies for Life

playlist and for more videos to help you find success and happiness using ancient philosophical

wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe.

Thanks so much for watching.