We usually place happiness and meaninglessness on opposite ends of a spectrum. If life has no purpose, how could anyone be happy? If someone is happy, they must have found some purpose. Camus dismantles this assumption in a single sentence. The absurd and happiness are not enemies. They are siblings, born from the same ground.

Consider what happens when you stop requiring life to justify itself. The pressure to find your calling, to decode the universe’s plan for you, to earn your place through achievement or belief: all of it lifts. What remains is not emptiness. What remains is Tuesday morning, the weight of a coffee cup in your hand, the sound of someone laughing in the next room. These things were always there, but you were too busy searching for capital-M Meaning to notice them.

Camus is not describing resignation. He is describing a liberation that only becomes possible after you stop demanding that the world make sense. The absurd strips away the noise of false promises, and in the quiet that follows, happiness has room to arrive on its own terms.

You do not need a reason to be happy. You need the courage to stop looking for one.