The Ravages Within

Camus never pretended that people are simply good and only the world is bad. He knew better. We all carry within us, he says, our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Every one of us holds some darkness, some capacity for harm, some private wound that could turn cruel. He does not exempt himself, and he does not exempt you.

But then comes the turn that makes this a statement of solidarity rather than despair. Our task, he says, is not to unleash these things upon the world. It is to fight them, in ourselves and in others. Look carefully at that last phrase. In ourselves and in others. The same battle runs on both fronts at once. I work against the cruelty in me, and I help you work against the cruelty in you, and neither of us pretends to be clean.

This is a gentler and more honest basis for standing together than the usual one. We are not allies because we are innocent. We are allies because we are all fighting the same interior enemy, and we can help each other lose to it less often.

Today, do the double work Camus describes. Catch one of your own ravages before it reaches someone, and then, gently, help another person hold theirs in check too. Fight it in yourself and in others. That shared struggle is a bond.