We can doubt many things about ourselves. We can question our memories, dismiss our regrets, and reject the sentimental stories we tell about our past. But there is one thing that resists all our doubts: the fundamental human need to understand.

This desire for clarity is not a preference we can simply set aside. It is the deepest impulse of consciousness itself. Even when we recognize that complete understanding may be impossible, even when we accept that the universe offers no ultimate answers, we still cannot stop ourselves from seeking coherence and meaning.

Camus identifies this as one of the irreducible certainties of human existence. While everything else in our mental life might be negotiable, this longing to solve, to clarify, to make sense of things, persists. It is what drives us to ask questions, to seek patterns, to demand explanations.

The absurd condition arises precisely because this need for clarity confronts a world that refuses to satisfy it. We cannot reconcile our hunger for understanding with the silence of the universe. Yet this very tension, this permanent opposition between our minds seeking answers and a world offering none, is what defines us as human.

The lucidity Camus calls for throughout this month begins here: in recognizing both the legitimacy of our need for clarity and the impossibility of fully satisfying it. Honesty requires that we acknowledge both truths without flinching.