There is a kind of philosopher who, upon discovering that the universe offers no answers, decides that nothing matters. Camus was not that kind of philosopher. He looked at the same silent sky and drew the opposite conclusion: if no cosmic truth is handed down, then we are left with something more immediate and more powerful. We are left with love.

Notice the precision of his language. The world offers no truths, but it does offer objects for love. Not theories, not doctrines, not final answers. Objects. A person. A place. A calling. The morning light on a familiar street. These things do not explain existence, but they make existence worth enduring. And that is not a small distinction. It is everything.

Camus wrote this in his private notebooks, not as a grand philosophical declaration, but as a quiet realization. He had already begun mapping the absurd, already understood that reason alone could not bridge the gap between our hunger for meaning and the world’s refusal to provide it. But he did not stop there. He kept looking until he found what remained after the illusions fell away. What remained was love.

Today, you do not need the universe to hand you a reason to care. You get to choose. In a world without cosmic guarantees, what do you choose to love anyway?