Existential Angst

I have recently read The Stranger by Albert Camus, and in fact have even done an oral presentation about it for AP English. To aid in the presentation, I rummaged through my notes from last year's philosophy class to find everything I could about Existentialism. Most of you reading this are probably very aware of the main tenants of the worldview, so I won't really go into detail.

Up until tonight, I have never fully experienced the "absurdity of life" that so permeates the existential view. I now know what the absurdity of life is. The absurdity of life is the fact that everyday you wake up, you go to work or school, and you go to sleep. The absurdity of life is the fact that, at least for me personally, I strive to create meaningful relationships with other people, specifically members of the opposing gender, but cannot find them. They fail -- almost all the time. Absurdity in life is standing on the sidewalk in front of your house while one of your best friends walks down the hill out of view with a plastic bag of clothes as he runs away from an overbearingly sadistic home. The absurdity of life, for me at least today, is a depressingly sharp reality.

Why go on? Seriously, why should I go on? That is the question posed by Existentialism. The only reason I can see to go on is that life was created to be absurd. We are born, we live, we die. We follow the same daily routine for ninety percent of our lives. We get turned down again and again when seeking a relationship. The most absurd things happen to us and our few friends throughout the course of the grind of life. Why does all this happen?

This happens because our focus is not meant to be on this absurd life. Why are we born, we live a short life, and then we die? Because we are meant to be motivated by this fact into searching for some other life. Why do our, especially my, relationships fail? Because we are meant to search for some higher relationship. To be quite honest, that knowledge is the only thing that is keeping me going.

Perhaps Plato's World of Ideas aptly fits this situation. Everything in this life is just a shadow of something else in some other plain of existence.

I now realize, to a very large degree, that Plato is more of a genius than I ever imagined, and that Existentialism hits the nail on the head much more squarely than I thought. The only road that I take that both of the aforementioned schools do not is that I believe in God. God is the only thing keeping me going right now. This life is absurd. Things in this life are just a shadow of some other plain of existence -- but I know that plain of existence is paradise. The one who made life absurd is God -- He did it so that we would search for Him. Why would a happy, content man ever want to seek God? All it would do is add suffering and responsibility to his life. We must be made not content, so that eventually we can become happier than we could ever imagine. I've seen that more clearly this weekend than ever before in my life, and I'm hoping and praying that I indeed can get back on track and be content in God.

~Tribal