Clamence lays out a trap here, and the trap is real. Society demands that happy people justify their happiness. You are expected to share it, display gratitude for it, make others feel included in it. The moment your happiness becomes private or unapologetic, people grow suspicious. Who do you think you are?

But happiness requires a certain selfishness. Not cruelty, not indifference, but the ability to stop monitoring how your life looks from the outside. The person who is always checking whether others approve of their joy will never fully experience it. The approval-seeking itself drains the thing it is trying to protect.

So you are stuck. Care too much about what others think and you lose your happiness. Stop caring and you face their judgment. Camus does not offer a way out of this dilemma because there is no clean way out. It is a genuine tension built into the structure of social life.

But naming it is useful. Once you see the trap, you can at least choose which side of it you prefer. And most people, if they are honest, would rather be happy and judged than miserable and approved of.