I am sure that there have been a few times in your life where everything has seemed meaningless; your grades, your hobbies, your hopes and ambitions. Nothing seems right, the injustices of the world both perpetuated by people and imposed on them have weighed heavily on your mind. To tackle such depth of feeling, I shall borrow a German word coined by author Jean Paul; ‘Weltschmerz’ – a state of melancholy induced by the deep imperfection of the world. This induces in many people a state which I am sure every university student is familiar with – an existential crisis.
Always, the big existential crisis comes – ironically – through an inner feeling of weltschmerz. When the constant drumbeat of school, work, life halts for a moment and your brain musters enough strength to hold a mirror up to the universe, to the world, and oftentimes to yourself – there is nowhere to run. The confrontation can seem almost aggressive – hence the use of ‘crisis’, but what if we took note of the word and the sentiment preceding ‘crisis’? Why is it so daunting to be existential?
To this problem I offer up an alternative meaning to the dreaded ‘existential’ mood. Albert Camus – least known of the existentialist philosophers but, in my view, the greatest of the existentialists – offered relief from the dreary existentialist view that ‘in life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing’ (Sartre) instead insisting that ‘the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.’ Camus’ magnum opus tackles the seemingly bottomless feeling of weltschmerz which overcomes us in the depth of an existential crisis. In the ‘Myth of Sisyphus’ – Camus outlines the tale of the Greek hero Sisyphus who defied the Gods and chained death to spare humans the fate of mortality. However, when death was freed Sisyphus tricked him and escaped to the underworld to evade his fate – when the Gods found him they condemned him to spend eternity rolling a boulder up a mountain only to roll back down when Sisyphus reaches its zenith, thus damning the noble Sisyphus to a meaningless undertaking. You would be tempted to see living in the modern world as a Sisyphusian endeavour – meaningless – and in some ways, you would be right. But where Camus transforms this indictment is in his stating that “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Camus offers an alternative to the endless despair and struggle of the state of absurdity which we are all born into, and urges us to instead take pleasure in the struggle – in rolling the boulder up the mountain. If the inadequacy and flawed nature of the world overcomes you – be existential, be resilient.