The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days." Albert Camus "The Fall"
An old friend of mine from my New Guinea days who has never read Camus, who had a wife and kids once, and who was an accountant no less until he fell onto hard times, has been moving from one town to another, and from one bedsitter to another, always signing short six-month leases before moving on again. Perhaps like Jean-Baptiste Clamence in "The Fall", he, too, is longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days.
(Substitute "country" for "town" and "company housing" for "bedsitter" and "six-month employment contracts" for "six-month leases", and you have quite a fitting decription of my own life between 1965 and 1985.)
I would've loved sending him a copy of "The Fall" but I don't have his address, and his mobile phone gives me the message "“The number you have dialled has been disconnected or is no longer in service". Perhaps his struggles are over and he no longer has to fear waking up each day.
