The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

by Robert Pantano

For Camus, there are plenty of tremendous reasons to endure the potential absurdity and pointlessness of rolling the rock up and down the hill. All of the things that exist around the rock that tend to seem as though they are less important than getting the rock to the top of the hill—the sun, the trees, the refreshing breeze, the friends, the relationships, the family, the art, the self-exploration, and anything else we can find interesting and wondrous—are, for Camus, all there is, and all there needs to be. These things are not the background, but rather, they are the foreground. Furthermore, it is the absurdity of these things that allows them to have the potential for intrigue and wonder. And it is up to us to be conscious of this and derive meaning from them all.