Processing our mortality

[LadyForCamus]

Right.  This is what I mean.  From my POV as the deceased (so to speak) there is no discernible difference between having lived and died, and having never been born in the first place.  I'm not talking about the difference I make in the world that continues to exist beyond my ending.  I didn't mean to imply that people who have died no longer mean anything to those of us still living.  Thanks for clarifying, Benny!

Given your name here, I'm not surprised that you see death as kind of a mockery of life.  The absurdity of mortality in the face of infinity was definitely a Camus thing.

That being said, I think almost EVERYTHING is absurd, from quantum mechanics to Big Bang or black hole singularities.  And yet, and I really think this is non-trivial: this morning, the birds are singing outside my window, the kids are laughing in the other room, and I have a few interesting things I could do today if I stepped away from the computer long enough.

Reading Camus was the first time I felt like there was a voice for the thoughts and feelings I was just starting to work through. His conclusion was, 'keep pushing that boulder up for as long as you possibly can, and don't be bothered to whine about it, because the alternative isn't any less absurd of an option.' So I thought, okay, I think I can do that. That's a workable plan.

Interesting piece of trivia about Camus for anyone who doesn't know: He had a well
documented fear of driving/riding in cars (understandable, considering they were no more than speeding death traps at the time), and was on record once stating that the most absurd way he could imagine his life ending would be via a car crash. He then died in a car crash.

It's like he was practically daring the living, within the context of his philosophy on life, to assign some kind of existential meaning or significance to the nature of his death.