Perhaps it has come down the line from a refreshed reading of The Stranger by Camus. I don’t claim to understand the book more than anyone else, or have any fresh insight about Absurdist views of the world. Was Camus’ life more or less interesting because he wrote a book about life’s meaninglessness? Can my own life be boiled down to a choice between meaning or non-meaning?

I think I have always worked under the auspices that life was “fraught” with meaning. Would you call me an anti-absurdist? I would counter with, meaning can be absurd too. Yet, I keep doing this thing, everyday…finding meaning in the things around me. Even this week, as I have played the observer to another’s life:

Meaning 1: In my dream I took a suitcase from the shelf. When I awoke, it seemed I had unresolved karma.

Meaning 2: Sometimes when you say you will never do a thing again, you do it again, but this time, it seems, it is right to do it again, even if you said you wouldn’t do it again.

Meaning 3: Rona called just at the time I left for my adventure. A right conversation at the right time.

Meaning 4: How to drive a big rig. Maybe that is all I needed to learn. I was caught driving through the night from Nevada to Utah this week, in an R.V., eating green energy bars to keep me awake.

Meaning 5: Spending the week with children and all their possibilities. Vivi said the other day, while I was swimming the sun hit me, and I lost a piece of my mind.

And I guess that brings me full circle. The Stranger would have said the same thing in his own defense. It was something about the sun. What I might have lost this week, I found in the seemingly absurd assertion of my own relative, meaning.