(1) I envy those who believe they deserve to live. I envy those who have the right to enjoy themselves. I envy those who can just find some pleasure, however modest it may be, in anything. I don't think I've ever enjoyed myself in anything.
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(2) My whole life has been something to endure or to fight for, a long series of battles for winning the right to live, the right to do what I really wanted to do. And these battles still go on. When do these battles end? When I die, of course. Do I enjoy these battles?
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(3) No. They're too intense for me to enjoy. When I tell anyone the tiniest shread of whatever I think or feel, people just tell me, "Have sex with someone you like and eat something you love, and you'll forget all about it. But I never get to forget it. Besides, I hate pleasure.
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(4) And, for another thing, I don't think I find pleasure in anything. Life is nothing but an incessant series of battles for improving yourself. There's just not a single second for mere pleasure. It's a luxury I can't ever afford or deserve to have.
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(5) If I allow myself to enjoy anything, I let myself enjoy improving myself or fighting for something higher, to overcome the pettiness and stupidity of pigs and apes passing for humans. In any case, I don't have to wait many more years to die, when quietude finally arrives.
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Replying to
What's the point in "improving" yourself when it is all going to turn to shit, anyway? It's kinda like that Sisyphus myth of rolling the stone up the hill only to have it roll back down again
#sisyphus #selfimprovement #futility
Replying to
Yes, I know I'm a Sisyphus. But I like being that way than stopping this struggle. I believe in the "als ob" (as if) philosophy. I don't believe in God or any absolute truth or justice or goodness or anything, but I go on living *as if* I believed in God or something of the sort.
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So, you follow Camus's dictate that one must imagine Sisyphus happy. I can't do that. That totally turned me off to Camus when I read that. But, apparently it works for some people. It's like "faith". "Imagine" is equal to "just believe". Which I can't do.
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