There is something almost childlike in the demand, and that is precisely the point. We come into this world expecting answers. Why do people suffer? Why do we lose the ones we love? What is all of this for? The questions are not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is that the universe has no interest in answering them.

Camus identifies a tension most of us feel but rarely name. Our hearts demand total explanation. Not partial theories, not educated guesses, but the whole truth, laid bare. And reason, that tool we trust above all others, simply cannot deliver. It tries. It builds systems, philosophies, theologies. But the moment it reaches for the ultimate “why,” it comes back empty-handed, tangled in contradictions.

This is the absurd in its rawest form. Not a logical puzzle to be solved, but a collision between two forces that will never reconcile. The heart will never stop asking. The world will never start answering. We live suspended in that gap every single day, whether we notice it or not. Most people try to close it, choosing one side or the other: blind faith that supplies all the answers, or cynical numbness that kills the questions. Camus refuses both exits. To live in the absurd means holding the tension open, letting the cry rise and the silence remain, without pretending either one away.