In this essay, I am attempting to bridge the yawning gap between Camus’s claim that life is absurd and Mary Oliver’s ode to nature and redemption.
Camus, the French-Algerian writer, philosopher and journalist, was best known for his contributions to absurdist literature. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 for his significant literary achievements and his exploration of the human condition and moral dilemmas.
Camus viewed the whole spectacle of World War II as absurd: a triumph of hate over reason with savage butchery, death camps and the senseless slaughter of 70 million people (60% of whom were civilians).
If he were alive today, I’m sure he would see our world as even more absurd, not only because of raging wars and rampant poverty around the world but also — because of our stupidity — our fixation on nuclear weapons and AI, which will likely cause our extinction.
But don’t get the wrong idea. While Camus thought the world was absurd, that didn’t mean things were hopeless or that we should throw up our hands in despair. Quite the opposite, as he explained in a 1945 interview:
“Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience,” but “it should not become a dead end.” Instead, it “arouses a revolt that can become fruitful” by helping “us to discover ideas” that would restore meaning to existence.
Sadly, finding ourselves at another such absurd point in our history, we must again adopt ideas that give us the strength to soldier on.
I believe the ideas we need, the anchor to hold us secure in the storm, already exist, forged by Mary Oliver, the acclaimed American poet. She expressed this idea succinctly in an interview with Krista Tippett. Despite a difficult childhood and the angst of living in a broken world, she was not bowed: “I got saved by the beauty of the world.” And, indeed, that was the overarching theme of her work.
It has also become the guiding light of my life. The sustenance I draw from the natural world is easy to find in New Hampshire. Much of my awe comes from the changing seasons, with the most beautiful one beginning now.
I appreciate that the ever-changing seasons prevent me from being lackadaisical. When I lived in LA for a year, I fell into a stale rut conditioned by the monotony of one sunny 70-degree day after another. Here I am viscerally reminded daily that the Buddhists are right: Life is change. That truth is captured perfectly in the old Yankee saying: “If you don’t like our weather, wait a minute.”
I’m only here for a fleeting appearance, no different from maple leaves: it seems like just yesterday they were chartreuse and bursting with energy, but already they are turning red and will soon wither and fall, compost for the next generation.
The change of seasons drives home the truth that I’m not immortal, only a small, renewable element in Mother Nature’s glorious creation: here today, gone tomorrow. In doing so, she teaches one overarching lesson: savor the moment.
Watching the maple leaves turn red, reveling in Mother Nature’s bounty, is what gives me the confidence to confront today’s absurd world; she gives me the motivation to move forward with confidence that Albert Camus advocated: “In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among men, a greater sincerity. We must achieve this or perish.”
We all need to believe there is a rhyme and reason to the universe to counteract the drumbeat of today’s gloom-and-doom news.
A piece this week in the New York Times states that America’s defining political emotion today “may be the sense that power, and with it the ability to push back on what bears down on you, is somewhere other than where you are, that you are unheard and unseen, that you are acted on but lack the means to act.”
Whenever I start to feel that way, I take a walk in the woods behind my house to restore my faith in a power greater than myself, of which I am an integral part. We all need a reminder that nature has our backs.
Jean Stimmell, retired stone mason and psychotherapist, lives in Northwood and blogs at jstim.substack.com.