The First Person Plural
“In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But from the moment when a movement of rebellion begins, suffering is seen as a collective experience.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE REBEL
Camus draws a line here between two ways of hurting. There is suffering you carry alone, and there is suffering you suddenly recognize as shared. In absurdist experience, he says, suffering is individual. Each of us faces the silence of the universe by ourselves, one small consciousness against the void. But something changes the instant a person rebels. From that moment, suffering is seen as a collective experience.
Think about what actually happens when you finally protest something unfair. A minute ago it was your private burden, your bad luck, your problem to swallow. Then you say out loud that this is wrong, and the words do something strange. They imply that it would be wrong for anyone, that your pain is an instance of a pain others know too. The complaint reaches past you. You look up and find you are not the only one.
This is the quiet birth of the word we. Rebellion is the moment the first person singular discovers the first person plural. Not through a theory of brotherhood, but through the plain act of refusing, which always turns out to speak for more than one.
Today, when something weighs on you, try saying it plainly to another person instead of carrying it alone. Notice how naming it as wrong, rather than merely enduring it, opens a door between you and someone else. That opening is where solidarity starts.
