Albert Camus was a French-Algerian novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, philosopher

and revolutionary, who lived in the 20th century. He wrote mainly novels, the most notable being

The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. Due to the high quality

of his work, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. Camus is one of the most

representative figures of the philosophy of the “absurd” or “absurdism,” a philosophical school

of thought which means that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.

We humans have a drive to find meaning in things and where it doesn’t exist we usually try to

create it. However, the universe we live in is cold and indifferent to this quest for meaning

and we will always be faced with absurd situations where our attempts to find meaning will fail.

Hence, our lives are meaningless and will remain so.

Absurdism is different from nihilism. Although both absurdism and nihilism

consider life as meaningless, absurdism gives you the motivation to rejoice in this fact

and find your own meaning and purpose in an otherwise meaningless and purposeless world.

Camus proposes 3 ways to approach absurdism: suicide, faith and acceptance.

Both suicide and faith can be considered as escapes: suicide a physical escape from life

and faith as a mental escape from life, as when you have faith in something, you do not need to

invest mental energy in reasoning why things are how they are. Suicide and faith fail to solve the

conflict between the human desire for meaning and the lack of meaning which exists in this world.

Thus, the only thing which remains is acceptance. Acceptance leads to individual freedom,

you become free from the moral judgments of life, you can create new meanings. Even though life

is meaningless, according to Camus, it is worth living and should be embraced as it is.

We are still living here and now and have every ability to enjoy ourselves

and to do so we need to live in the present moment and make the most of it. By knowing

how to enjoy the present moment, you can more easily reach the state of acceptance

and you will know how to face the absurd. Which is why to help with that

we bring you 7 ways you can make most of your present from the philosophy of Albert Camus:

Have a motivation for living Camus asks

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

Camus is the philosopher who pondered the most on the idea of suicide and, in his essay “The Myth

of Sisyphus” he stated that there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

When we wake up from slumber and we scroll down our phones and see only negative news and we

remember all the bad past events that happened in our lives, we all can reach at some point

the thought that life might not be worth living. To stand up and go to your espresso machine to

make your morning coffee is in itself a statement that you are willing to push it more, that your

life might be worth living and you are willing to try to succeed again in your endeavours.

We cannot live our lives if we do not take it step by step,

savoring every present moment, having patience; to accomplish our goals and dreams takes time

and we should take it slowly, without falling into despair. One of the most important secret keys to

allow yourself to enjoy the present moment is to learn to take it slowly. This will prevent

you from getting into despair and thinking about suicide. No matter how bad things look like, in

your personal life, in the world, there is always a small ray of hope you can cling on to.

Even if you think it is too late for you, that you are not able to accomplish your dreams anymore,

that all doors have closed for you for example, your dream was to be a professional football

player and you are now in a wheelchair, you can find motivation to live if you think of others,

if you are able to make others’s lives a bit happier. Perhaps you have some money

you can invest in a charitable foundation, you can volunteer to help others in some way.

No matter how small your help is, you can make the world a better place

and this should be a good reason to continue living and enjoy the present moment.

2. Be yourself at all times Camus

says “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

We have the tendency to believe others when they tell us who we are and we mold our personality

according to their opinion. Camus draws to our attention that in order to live in the

present moment, we need to give up the urge to fit in, the urge to accommodate ourselves

according to the wish of others, that we need to rebel against the norms which are imposed on us.

We need to take ownership of our individuality, of our human

instincts and fight the absurdity of things in order to really live in the present moment.

Nowadays, this issue has become even more critical. Today’s social media makes us lose our

natural instincts, makes us live for receiving a few likes now and then, makes us post on Facebook,

Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok only what we think is liked by others and not what really represents us.

What we really need to come back to ourselves is a bit more self-awareness, more mindfulness,

more time spent on watching the clouds go by in the sky than staring at our screens.

To be who we really are, we need to spend less time on thinking how others want us to be, on

what they expect us to be, we need to understand that we are not defined by what we do at our work,

by the work accomplishments we have or by how we look. These are all intertwined with society, with

its absurdity and, according to Camus, we need to fight this absurdity by rebelling against it.

We can rebel against it by doing the opposite of what anyone does,

by doing things that reflect more who we are - at least from time to time.

For example, if your company organizes a small party after work before Christmas and this party

isn’t mandatory and you hate parties, don’t go just to conform with what everyone else is doing.

Rather, go straight home after work and spend quality time with your family.

Allow yourself to do the things you really enjoy, break the norms and copy others less.

3. Live intensively Camus tells us to “Live to the point of tears.”

According to Camus, the tragic condition of human beings is caused by the conflict

between their desire for meaning and the silence of the world, the world’s refusal

to provide us with any meaning. This conflict gives birth to the absurd, our human condition.

However, for Camus, life is worth living, even when it has no meaning. Even more, the absurd

is the beginning of life, not a dead end as it was for Sartre and other existentialists.

This conflict keeps our soul young and rebellious, keeps us truly living in the present moment.

Precisely in that conflict, we can create a meaning for ourselves and we can overcome despair

and the suicidal tendencies. The more meaning we create for our lives, the more intensively we can

rebel against the world and the more intensively we can live our lives, “to the point of tears”.

Camus believed that the greatness of man is how he fights against something which

is greater than himself. In order to live your life intensively, you need to find

great goals to follow, fights worth being fought. Do not set pedestrian goals for yourself,

but rather aim for something bigger, something that makes your heart tremble with ecstasy.

For example, do not just have a goal like “I want to be a good medical doctor”,

but rather aim to be the best doctor in your area or even in the entire country.

Only the thought of you becoming the best doctor would make you thrilled, fully motivated to give

your best to your present moment, would make you take higher responsibilities at your workplace,

accept more patients, save more lives, living your life at a frantic pace.

Although in the great scheme of things we all die and life has no real meaning,

staying on the front line and continuing to fight to save lives

and live the fight intensively will make you live the present moment to the fullest.

4. Live like a rebel According to Camus “The only way to deal with an

unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Even if Camus could not join the army during world war II,

he was a part of the French Resistance — being the editor in chief of an outlawed newspaper.

He fought against injustice, putting his life in danger. Also, although born from French parents

in Algeria, he criticized the unjust ways in which French people treated the Algerians.

Wherever he saw injustice, he rebelled against it. According to Camus, if we are unfree,

then we must rebel, fight to gain our freedom, putting all our efforts into that pursuit.

Also, free people must be in a permanent state of revolution. If they are not, if they are losing

sight of that rebel state, they will start building up walls and prisons around them.

The rights we have nowadays as people living in free democracies

were not automatically given, they were fought for by our ancestors.

We should never take for granted the freedom that we have and we need to protect it at all costs.

There is no true living without freedom, we cannot really enjoy the present moment if we

are not allowed to express ourselves freely, if we are physically or psychologically imprisoned.

According to Camus, there is nothing more despicable than respect based on

fear. Think of all the situations when you had to respect someone because you feared

the consequences of not respecting them. In this case, you denigrated your values,

the things you stand for, in order to avoid unpleasant situations. For example, when your

boss told you to follow a procedure which was not ethical and you did so without argument.

If you were truly following your own ethics, if you were present with your entire being at

that moment, you would have said something, you would have told your boss the truth,

that you find that procedure unethical and you do not wish to be part of such a project.

A company should not invoke a master-slave relationship,

but it should be rather a partnership between employers and employees. In whatever you do,

take yourself with you, your values, your morality and pay attention to what is happening around you,

live in the present moment, and react, rebel against anything which violates your moral laws.

5. Focus on practical things

To quote Camus “I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”

The quote belongs to Meursaults, the main character in the novel “The Stranger”

by Albert Camus. Although a character with dubious morality, Meursaults has the quality of being

extremely honest, expressing his indifference to things like the death of his mother or if Marie,

his girlfriend, loves him. He bluntly stated that he does not want to waste his limited time on God.

He rejects the moral standards of a society which, for example, dictates that one should

grieve over the death of one’s parents. He went so far that he even committed a crime, stating

that he did it because the Sun was too bright and too hot. Meursaults is neither moral or immoral,

but amoral, showing indifference to any moral code of society. When he is sentenced to death,

he starts to ponder that the universe is as indifferent to human life as he was.

At that moment, he makes peace with himself and with the world. Through acceptance

of this indifference, he became able to face the absurd. Thus, faith, the belief in God,

was useless for Meursault to face the absurd, it was only through acceptance that he succeeded.

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

life’s meaning which defies rationality. Camus considers faith a type of suicide,

namely a philosophical suicide, because faith defies rationality, irrationality being the

opposite of a philosophical argument. To face the absurd means to be immersed deeply in life,

to face its sorrows and moral problems, without implying religious beliefs.

As we have limited time on Earth, we should spend it living each day to the fullest and we

should not spend it thinking of the afterlife, or imaginary worlds. Camus did not believe in

an afterlife, but he admitted that you can be a Christian and absurd at the same time. No matter

if we believe in God or not, we should be anchored in reality, courageous enough to face the good,

the bad and the ugly of this life, taking each moment as it is, dealing with it in a

practical manner, without involving religion, the supernatural or superstitious beliefs.

For example, if a close one is suffering from a severe disease,

don’t just spend your time praying for them to recover, but rather call all the

best medical doctors you can find and try to find the best remedy to save your dear one.

Focus on finding practical solutions in each present moment, deal with life as it is.

6. Accept the unpredictability of life In the words of Camus

“You can't create experience, you undergo it.”

Camus believed that there is no substitute for living an experience. You can read all the books

in the world, but the knowledge you would get from them would be small compared to the knowledge you

can get from a real life experience. Camus had a difficult life, he was born in a poor

neighbourhood in Algeria, he was part of the French resistance fighting Nazis in the World

War Two, working for an outlawed newspaper and after the war he fought for European integration.

Besides that, he had a tumultuous love life and he died in a tragic car accident.

No matter who we are, life has a way to sometimes undermine all of our plans. We have no idea when

a tragedy can come into our life, we might get hit by a truck, lose our life in a car accident

like Camus,or find one day we have cancer or lose all of our possessions due to a natural disaster.

It is vain hubris to believe we can be in full control of what is happening to us.

That is why it is important to let loose, to learn to relax,

to be comfortable with the uncomfortable events which might happen to us.

You are not the one who creates those experiences, you just undergo them. You need to learn how to

deal with your attachments and learn to have fewer expectations, learn to be more flexible.

You can make a list with the things that you can control and things which you cannot. For example,

you might find out that you can control how many hours you can invest in preparing for an exam

or how many hours you can allocate at work for learning a particular piece of software,

but you cannot control the problems that you will face; how many sections you will have difficulties

understanding, your overall performance after learning, or how your professor or boss will

perceive your efforts and how they will reward them. Invest all your thoughts and efforts in

learning or doing the work and not at all in worrying about what the outcome will be.

Maybe the school assignment will be too difficult for you or you will discover that software is

more of a struggle to learn than you have the capacity for, or that your professor or boss

will give you bad feedback because they were in a bad mood at that time. That should not worry you,

what you need to focus on is what you can control. You cannot have control over

everything that happens to you, but you need to put all of your efforts into what you can do.

7. Find happiness in every phase of your life In our final quote from Camus for this video,

he says “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

The quote is said by the character Jan in Camus’ play - “The Misunderstanding”, written in 1943

in the style of Greek tragedies and focused on the concept of the absurd. One of the main ideas

of the play is that life does not distinguish between those who pursue a ‘bad’ path and those

who pursue a ‘good’ path, life is equally cruel to the innocent and to the criminal. No matter

how moral we are, how worthy we are, life will carry us all towards destruction, towards death.

Nowadays, social media, the movies we watch and songs that we watch and listen to, they

all seem to glorify youth, beauty, and vitality, qualities which seem to coincide with the “spring”

and “summer” seasons of our lives. Usually, we are beautiful and have a lot of vitality when we are

living the first half of our lives. As we grow older, we get more knowledgeable and many of us

become more successful, we earn more money, but we also get more wrinkles and our body gets weaker.

Even at this stage of our lives, we still need to enjoy our lives,

to savor each present moment, all the colorful leaves in our lives.

The older we get, the more we can get in touch with our inner beauty and wisdom

and we should share them with the new generation. We can discover new ways of self expression,

a new identity, new forms of enjoying life. Instead of focusing on the wrinkles around

our eyes, we should focus on the wisdom which came with them, on the lessons we learned in

life and we should work hard in making use of them to make the world a better place.

If you are now in your late 40s, in your 50s or 60s, it is safe to consider that you are probably

in the autumn season of your life. At this point, you should have probably a direction in your life,

you should have a base on which you can rely on,

be it a career or a business. You are a knowledgeable person, with already many years of

experience and you are able to pass this knowledge and experience on to the new generations.

Some people at this age start to feel depressed that the most vital part of their life has already

passed, that they no longer conform to beauty standards the way they once did, that they cannot

run marathons as when they were young. However, there are still many things to enjoy in life:

great moments with their partners, with their children, grandchildren or nephews and nieces,

the feeling of pride to be in charge of critical projects at work, the quiet evenings when they

can stroll around a lake or enjoying a long and deserving holiday at a resort.

Every age comes with its benefits, we just have to know which they are and make the best out of them:

look at the full half of the glass, not at the empty part. Living your life to the fullest

involves knowing how to savor each season of your life in its own unique way.

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