Live for the Present

"Real generosity to the future is giving all to the present." - Albert Camus, The Rebel

As we go through university, we encounter a mindset that asks you to get a degree that might not be your real passion so that you can make more money. It asks you to work in order to retire. At its most basic level, this mindset asks us to suffer now so we can be happy later. That is one philosophy, but it is not my philosophy.

I’ve rejected this mindset by studying a subject that is not traditionally thought to make money, but which I think will make me happier: philosophy. This is a study of the whys, hows, and whats of life, and as such, I believe that philosophy is best suited to tackle the questions of happiness. I want to share what I’ve learned about happiness from two of my favorite philosophers.

Aristotle

Although I’ve studied Aristotle’s ethics the most, I believe that his conception of ethics can teach us something about happiness. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle lays out what we now call virtue ethics; the idea is that there are a series of virtues that are in between two other vices. For example, one of Aristotle’s virtues is courage, which falls in between overconfidence and cowardice, both of which are vices. Hitting these virtues will lead to a good and ethical life.

As well as being a basic model for how to live a good life, I think what Aristotle says about cultivating these virtues is the most important for happiness. He says that it’s almost impossible to know how to hit the mark, but we can get close. If we want to become courageous, but we’re slightly terrified, we should try to err on the side of overconfidence. If we’re overconfident, we should become more cautious. In other words, being virtuous is a habit. By moving through these cycles over and over, we can reach a point that’s incredibly close to courage.

The lesson is that being happy isn’t something we master immediately—it’s something we work at. But by continually aiming for that mean, we’ll get closer, little by little.

Camus

Albert Camus is one of my favorite philosophers. He wrote most of his work during and in the aftermath of World War II, including two books that attempt to tackle the meaning of life: The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Rebel.

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus identifies the feeling of the absurd—the conflict between the human desire for meaning and organization in a universe that seemingly doesn’t care about either. This is a feeling that I think has been all too common during the pandemic. However, when confronted with this, Camus writes that humanity has to familiarize itself with the absurd. Once we’ve done that, we can recognize that the absurd is not a lack of meaning but a symptom of it. The absurd is only possible because of this beautiful, incomprehensible phenomenon that we call life, and we must make the most of every moment.

A follow up to this thought comes in the largely political treatise of The Rebel. The quote at the start of this post is from The Rebel and is Camus’s repudiation of political philosophies which justify current suffering in the name of some future glory. Camus says it is in human nature to rebel against the seeming meaninglessness of the universe and the way we do this is through acts of creation; he calls art the purest form of rebellion. I think many of us can relate to this in the way we took up some creative activity during the pandemic, whether baking, journaling, painting, or any number of things.

On the basis of Camus’s work, I think the takeaway is that we should make the most of the present, because we never know what the future holds. I need to work on keeping this in mind, but I think it’s the key to living a happy life.