We tend to think the absurd lives only out there, in the gap between ourselves and the silent universe. But Camus turns the lens inward and finds the same divide running through us. You can feel your own heart beating. You know you exist. And yet, when you try to say who you are, really are, the words never quite land. You list your roles, your habits, your history, and still something essential slips away, like water through your fingers.

This is not a failure of self-help or introspection. It is the human condition turned inward. We are mysteries to ourselves in the same way the universe is a mystery to us. Think of the last time someone asked you a simple question: “What do you want?” If you paused, even for a moment, you touched this gap Camus describes. Our desires, motivations, and fears run deeper than any explanation we can offer for them.

And yet there is a strange freedom in this. If you cannot be fully defined, you also cannot be fully trapped by any single definition. You are not reducible to your worst day, your job title, or your biggest mistake. The absurd, even when it lives inside you, leaves room for becoming.