There is something almost comical about being human. We wake up, go to work, earn money, pay bills, worry about the future, and go to sleep, only to repeat everything the following morning. We call it life. But occasionally, when we are too exhausted to distract ourselves, an uncomfortable question emerges: What is the point of all this?
Born on 7 November 1913, the French-Algerian writer and philosopher Albert Camus spent his life confronting the absurdity of human existence.
More than six decades after his death, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Outsider (1942) speak to a world struggling with suffering, contradictions, and uncertainty.
In 2026, Camus is not merely relevant. He is necessary.
The absurdity of being alive
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus identifies suicide as philosophy's most serious problem. Before debating justice, morality or religion, we must confront a fundamental question: Is life worth living?
Camus calls the confrontation between our hunger for meaning and the universe's silence the absurd.
We want justice, but injustice persists.
We want permanence, but everything changes.
We want suffering to mean something, yet the world offers no guaranteed explanation.
Consider an ordinary Bangladeshi citizen struggling through traffic, working long hours, and worrying about rising living costs or a graduate who studies for years only to discover that education does not guarantee employment.
We are told to work harder and remain patient, even when circumstances make those promises seem hollow.
Camus offers neither blind optimism nor surrender. He proposes revolt: the conscious decision to live and struggle without pretending that the universe owes us answers.
We need not discover an ultimate meaning before we can begin living meaningfully.
Meursault and the society that puts us on trial
If The Myth of Sisyphus articulates the philosophical problem, The Outsider gives it a human face. Meursault (protagonist of The Outsider) refuses to perform the grief expected of him at his mother's funeral. Later, after killing an Arab man on a beach, he faces a trial in which his emotional indifference becomes almost as important as the crime itself.
Society seems disturbed not only by what he has done but also by his refusal to behave like a conventional son.
Meursault is no uncomplicated hero. He commits a killing, and his indifference raises serious moral questions.
Moreover, the unnamed Arab victim exposes a troubling colonial silence: the European protagonist receives an elaborate interior life, while the man he kills remains largely without a name or voice. Reading Camus critically means acknowledging this imbalance.
Nevertheless, Meursault forces us to ask: Do we judge people for their actions, or also punish them for refusing to perform the emotions we expect?
In Bangladesh, where family honor, religious conventions, social reputation and communal expectations shape individual lives, this question remains urgent.
Social media intensifies the problem: a photograph, an unfortunate sentence or an unconventional response can become grounds for public condemnation. We demand authenticity but punish those who refuse our preferred scripts.
Meursault's trial challenges us to distinguish genuine wrongdoing from discomfort with difference.
How much of what we call morality is morality, and how much is simply obedience to social expectations?
Why Camus matters in 2026
Our world is saturated with explanations but strangely impoverished in understanding. Political ideologies promise perfect futures, digital platforms reward outrage, and advertising teaches us to measure ourselves against manufactured images of happiness. Certainty often matters more than truth.
Camus distrusts the temptation to justify present suffering in the name of an imagined perfect future. For Bangladesh, this is no abstract concern. Amid economic pressures, questions of justice and accountability, environmental vulnerability and competing promises of development, we are frequently asked to endure today's difficulties for tomorrow's rewards. Sometimes endurance is necessary. But when does patience become an excuse for injustice? When does hope become a substitute for action?
Camus does not ask us to abandon collective struggle. If no cosmic script guarantees justice, our responsibility to build just institutions and protect one another becomes more urgent, not less. His philosophy also speaks to our digital age: we can remain permanently connected through screens while feeling profoundly isolated. Acknowledging life's difficulties may be more liberating than pretending everything is fine. We need neither absolute certainty to oppose injustice nor manufactured optimism to care for others.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is condemned to push a boulder uphill, only to watch it roll back down. He must begin again, endlessly. Camus recognizes our condition in this punishment: we struggle, lose, rebuild and begin again, often without knowing whether our efforts will ultimately succeed.
Yet The Myth of Sisyphus concludes: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Not because suffering is pleasant, but because Sisyphus confronts his condition without surrendering to it. His revolt lies in continuing without illusion. Perhaps we are all pushing something uphill: a degree, a career, a family, a country, a fragile hope that tomorrow might be less difficult. But we must not romanticize poverty or tell the exhausted simply to be happy. Happiness cannot replace fair wages, social justice or the conditions necessary for a dignified life. Accepting reality must never mean refusing to change it.
And what about Meursault?
If Sisyphus teaches us to confront our condition, Meursault exposes the social rituals through which we disguise it. Yet his moral failures remind us that personal freedom cannot mean indifference to others. Perhaps we are all Sisyphus and Meursault in different proportions: exhausted by repetition, alienated by expectations, tempted by indifference, and still searching for a way to live honestly.
We should therefore resist turning Camus into another inspirational quotation on a social media post. His philosophy offers no magical escape from the absurd. It offers something more difficult and more useful: the courage to see clearly, to resist what diminishes human dignity, to care without guarantees, and to continue living without lying to ourselves.
The boulder will roll back. The world will remain imperfect. Our questions may never receive final answers. But we can still decide how we meet the mountain, what we do for those climbing beside us, and whether we allow the absurdity of existence to make us cruel or more compassionate.
Perhaps that is what it means to imagine Sisyphus happy: not to pretend that life is easy, but to refuse to let its difficulty have the final word.
Kallol Bain is a lecturer in the Department of English at Daffodil International University.