The Task Is Endless

France had just fallen when Camus wrote this, and his readers had run out of reasons for hope. He offers them no reason. He states a want instead, then concedes the obvious objection to it before anyone else can raise it.

Look at what he refuses. Never again to bow beneath the sword. Force keeps existing in his arrangement, since he knew it could not be wished away. What it loses is the authority to settle who was right, however much of it one side happens to hold.

Then the concession. Endless. Most encouragement works by hiding that word, promising a finish somewhere past the next effort. Camus puts it in the middle of his own sentence and carries on, which is stranger and sturdier than pretending the finish exists.

What he puts in place of completion is a location. We are here to pursue it. No victory is forecast and no reward is named. The line you hold today has to be drawn again tomorrow, in the same place, by you, with nothing banked from having held it once.

Today, on the last day of the month, hold the line you have found hardest to hold. September asks what sits underneath all of it. How do you keep going when the work never ends and nobody arrives to tell you it was enough?