What the Fight Costs
“For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it. In the clamor in which we live, love is impossible and justice does not suffice.” ALBERT CAMUS · RETURN TO TIPASA
Camus went back to the Roman ruins at Tipasa in the winter, older now, famous, worn down by a decade of public argument. The essay he brought home contains one of his most honest admissions, and it is not about his enemies.
He is describing an occupational illness. You begin fighting something because you love people and cannot bear what is being done to them. The fight turns out to be long. It asks for vigilance and anger and a certain hardness, and those things work.
They also dry you out. One day you notice that you are still fighting and the love is gone, and what remains is the habit of opposition, running on contempt because contempt is cheaper fuel.
Camus does not tell us to stop fighting. He tells us to watch the gauge, because a justice with no love left in it shrivels into something bitter and dry. This is the most personal limit of them all. Not a line you refuse to cross against other people, but one you refuse to cross against yourself.
If your commitment now runs mostly on how much you despise the other side, your fuel has changed without your noticing. Step back and find whatever you were originally protecting. Sit near it until you remember.
