Camus’ shower thoughts

I've been reading Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus in preparation for the group classes I'm running next year. I'd forgotten how brilliant the essay is. I'll write out the main things I can remember from today's reading session without referring to my notes.

Perhaps this is a great way of getting to the essence of things. Read something, then wait a while before writing down the key points you remember. These are the ideas that had the most impact, as they are the ones that stayed with you. Since it's hard to recall exact lines of prose, you'll write them as you remember them, in a way that makes the most sense to you.

I'm on the first few pages of the essay, reading a section titled Absurd Walls (Les Murs Absurdes).

Le Mythe de Sisyphe by Albert Camus (1942)

How to know someone

The first thing that struck me was Camus' description of how it is difficult, indeed impossible at times, to get to the source of feelings and emotions. We have certain springs that generate emotions – this is my interpretation, not Camus' words – but these springs are buried deep within us, as if on the bed of a lake.

We (and others) experience these emotions as an observer may experience ripples on the surface of the lake. We observe the products of the buried spring, but may never comprehend the precise nature of the spring itself i.e. what aspects of our character is generating those emotions.

Camus goes on to highlight that the individual can determine the source of the emotion by observing multiple behavioural traits across time.

Camus uses the example of an actor playing multiple parts. It is difficult to comprehend the true personality of the actor by watching a single film, but in watching their many different parts in many different films, you may be able to determine certain aspects of their true nature.

I like this perspective. It's like typecasting. Why are certain individuals repeatedly cast in the same roles? Perhaps their innate character aligns somewhat with the roles they are selected for. Hugh Grant made a humorous complaint recently that he keeps getting cast in roles playing a demented old man. Out with the bumbling heartthrob from Notting Hill, in with the old fool. I've really taken to Hugh Grant recently. His cynicism in interviews is hilarious.

So, you can deduce from an actor's many roles something about their innate, hidden character, in the same way that you can deduce from someone's many behavioural traits the nature of their emotional outlook.

I suppose it's like when iPhones used to have those fingerprint scanners on the home button. You had to press your finger against the sensor multiple times at slightly different angles. That way, the device could map a thorough impression of your fingerprint.

I'll quickly go back to my notes and include a quote from Camus’ essay here to illustrate the point:

I know men and recognise them by their behaviour, by the totality of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by their presence.

Even though we can never fully know someone, we can understand them through their actions and the impacts they have on the world. Such actions create a 'climate' around them.

Camus then relates these ideas back to his philosophy of the Absurd – man's struggle for meaning in a meaningless universe. A feeling of absurdity is like one of these unknowable emotions, says Camus. The absurd man, the individual who is facing his absurdity, creates his own 'climate'. For example, Meursault in Camus' The Stranger carries with him a very particular climate, which has a great impact on his perspective and unsettles many of the people he encounters.

Where ideas come from

The second striking argument in this section of the essay referred to how some of the best ideas do not derive from grand beginnings. They simply occur at the most unexpected moments – on a street corner or when walking through a revolving door, for instance. This seems like Camus' version of what are described today as shower thoughts.

This point is used to highlight how the feeling of the absurd itself can occur in the most trivial and mundane moments. Maybe something like this:

You walk through a revolving door. The tarmac of the street outside is peppered with chewing gum patches. There's a big billboard across the street displaying a Cornetto the size of a nuclear submarine, and you think, "What?"

L'Absinthe by Edgar Degas (1875-6)

Carrying time

The third point I remember concerns our relationship with time. There comes a point, writes Camus, when you begin to carry time. I’ll find the quote because I love this idea. Here it is:

A moment comes in life when you realise you must carry time.

Before this moment, you were being carried by time. I think I experienced the moment Camus describes when I turned twenty-six. The realisation was so clear. Until that age, I really had been carried by time, in the sense that I wasn't aware of its passage, its texture, its weight, I was naive to its impact and importance. I didn't think my time would ever come to an end because I had never concerned myself with its passage. I was like the fish unaware it's swimming in water. And then twenty-six came and everything changed. It was something about that number for me. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus uses the age of thirty. For me, I think it was twenty-six because of its proximity to thirty, the big three-O.

I like the idea of the individual realising they must carry time. Time weighs on us and takes its toll until death.

Those were three lessons from reading the opening section of Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus.