I wake up every morning, and it’s the same shit. The alarm screeches like a bitch, my bones creak like a haunted house, and I drag myself to a mirror that shows a face I don’t recognize anymore. I’m 38, and I’ve done the things they told me to do, family business, education, what I must wear, how I must cut my hair, smiled at the neighbors even when I wanted to scream. And for what? So I can sit in traffic, breathing exhaust, while some asshole in a BMW cuts me off? So I can scroll through my phone, watching people I hate post pictures of their perfect lives, knowing they’re as miserable as I am? So I can shovel processed garbage into my mouth, feeling my arteries clog with every bite, while the clock ticks down to the inevitable? Camus said the absurd is the tension between our desire for meaning and the universe’s cold silence. Well, the universe isn’t just silent, it’s laughing. It’s laughing as we scurry around like ants, building our little nests, pretending we’re more than just future corpses.
Let’s talk about the endgame, because that’s where the mask really slips. You think you’re special? You think your life’s a grand story with a satisfying conclusion? Bullshit. You’re going to end up on a hospital bed, or worse, a nursing home cot, your body a roadmap of scars and failures, your mind a fog of half-remembered regrets. And there’ll be a nurse, some overworked, underpaid stranger who doesn’t know your name and doesn’t care to learn it. She’ll check your chart, adjust your IV, maybe mutter something about your vitals while she glances at the clock, counting the minutes until her shift ends. You’re not a person to her. You’re a task, a chore, a piece of meat that’s still breathing, for now. She’ll turn you over to stop the bedsores, her hands cold and mechanical, her eyes blank. You’ll try to speak, to tell her you were someone once, that you loved and laughed and dreamed, but the words won’t come. And even if they did, she wouldn’t listen. You’re nothing. I’m nothing. We’re all nothing.
So why do we keep going? Why do we claw our way through the muck of existence, chasing things that crumble to dust the second we touch them? Money? It buys you a bigger house to be miserable in. Love? It fades, or it dies, or it turns into resentment, and then you’re left staring at a stranger across the dinner table, wondering why you ever thought they’d save you. Kids? They grow up, they leave, they blame you for their own misery, and then they repeat the same stupid cycle. Success? A pat on the back from people who’d step over your corpse to get ahead. Camus asked if the absurd should lead us to suicide, and I say: why not? If the boulder’s just going to roll back down, why keep pushing it? Why not kick it over the edge and jump after it, laughing all the way down?
They’ll tell you to find meaning in the struggle itself, like Camus did. He said we must imagine Sisyphus happy, that the act of defiance against the absurd, living in spite of it, is its own kind of victory. But I’m not buying it. Defiance for what? To prove a point to a universe that doesn’t care? To impress the nurse who’ll forget me the second I flatline? I’ve spent 38 years struggling, and all I’ve got to show for it is a body that’s falling apart, a family I can’t save from their own decay, and a head full of pain and suffering. The struggle isn’t noble. It’s pathetic. It’s a rat in a maze, running in circles, thinking the cheese is just around the corner. There is no cheese. There’s just a trap, and we’re already caught.
And I think about that nurse, the one who’ll be there at the end, her face a blank mask as she watches me die. She won’t cry. She won’t mourn. She’ll just move on to the next slab of meat, and the world will keep spinning, indifferent as ever. Camus said the only serious philosophical question is whether life is worth living. I’ve got my answer: it’s not. It never was.
So let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop running. Let’s stop building sandcastles in a storm. We’re meat, nothing more, and the butcher’s waiting. Why struggle when the end’s already written? Why fight when the fight’s already lost? I say we walk into the void on our own terms, forty, fifty, whenever the weight gets too heavy. Let the nurse find someone else to ignore. Let the boulder roll down the hill without us. Let the universe laugh at someone else’s expense. I’m done. You’re done. We’re all fucking done.