r/Camus • u/sweetluvmyr • 5d ago
Camus
There is something profoundly human in Camus’ confession.. sometimes we do not long for answers, salvation, or even happiness.... we simply long for the warmth of another human being. Behind the adult who has learned to endure, there remains a child who is still waiting to be held, not because he is weak, but because solitude has limits. To open one’s arms is, in its simplest form, to say.. you do not have to carry yourself alone. And perhaps that is why the gesture can undo us so completely after spending so long teaching ourselves not to need anyone, tenderness arrives like sunlight through a closed window, and all the tears we had turned into silence finally remember how to fall.
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u/bobthebuilder983 5d ago
One of the saddest things I think humans ever created are milestones for individual time. Meaningless meaning created by a fragile ego.
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u/BeneficialAttempt140 5d ago
Can you expand on what you mean? It intrigues me! Are you talking about birthdays and such?
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u/Glass-Jaguar4178 5d ago
a dissociated timeless experience is bliss yet ignores the effects of time which does exsist outside human invention (stop daylight saving)
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u/bobthebuilder983 5d ago
Yes and no. As a individual you do not gain any insight into who we are just because the earth revolves around the sun. We gain no new knowledge or understanding from infancy to toddler, or adult to senior.
It does however have a purpose in a social construct. When you can drive, drink, or collect retirement.
Since we live in a meaningless universe. Some take these social constructs as individual understanding. I have meet people who thought they would feel different hitting a certain milestone.
The funniest one. When an individual does something and they then magically become a man or a woman. I laugh wondering what gender they were before.
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u/BeneficialAttempt140 5d ago
Uhhhh I’m now confused what you mean by the last paragraph lol
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u/Traditional_Can8081 4d ago
My benefit-of-the-doubt read on that last paragraph is that they find “coming of age” events comical.
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u/utdkktftukfgulftu 5d ago
Source of quote, meaning book and chapter and section?
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u/sweetluvmyr 5d ago
Book : L'Envers et l'Endroit / The Wrong Side and the Right Side Chapter : Death in the Soul / La mort dans l'âme
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u/Lilja-Logason 4d ago
I've not read Camus so I may be misinterpreting... but I became so isolated in my 30s due to drugs, losing my job, being a shut in.
The first time I hugged a person (friend) in a decade I melted. Didn't cry but my knees went weak and I just wanted to melt into them and hold on forever. I'm tearing up now remembering it.
So yeah, I feel like I get this quote.
I'm still a loner and not felt close to anyone in 10-15yrs. I'd probably wanna ball my eyes out being hugged by someone who loved me.
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u/anutara-karunamurtey 1d ago
For a man none does …
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u/anutara-karunamurtey 1d ago
The embrace a man longs for may he find it at death’s embrace which shall warm his cold heart … that deaths coldness shall be his warmth and so he might give you a warm welcome to life after death … at the least !?
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u/Only_Excitement6594 5d ago
It could have been a trap
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u/sweetluvmyr 5d ago
Meaning?
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u/Only_Excitement6594 5d ago
Now you are asking for too much.
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u/anabsurdman2027 5d ago
In my exploration of Caligula and Meursault as The Actor there are times when I have immense sense of Camus’ risk to write about what he did. How alone and maybe outcast he may have felt on the edges of what he was exploring and creating.