Side by Side

We stay in the plague-struck town. A child has just died, slowly and in agony, and two men who could hardly be more opposed are left standing over the body. Rieux is the doctor, an unbeliever who fights the disease with his hands and expects nothing from heaven. Paneloux is a Jesuit priest who has just watched his God allow the innocent to suffer. They have every reason to turn on each other. Instead Rieux says, We’re working side by side for something that unites us, beyond blasphemy and prayers. And it’s the only thing that matters.

This is one of the great moments in Camus. The doctor does not pretend the disagreement is small. He and the priest see the universe in flatly contradictory ways, and neither is going to convince the other. But there is a sick child, and there will be more, and both men are bent over the same beds trying to save them. That shared work, Rieux insists, matters more than the argument they will never settle. It unites them at a level deeper than belief.

We are badly out of practice at this. We have learned to sort people first by what they think, and to decide that those who think wrongly are not really on our side at all. Camus points to something the plague makes obvious and ordinary life lets us forget. You can stand beside someone whose whole worldview you reject and still be, in the way that counts most, allies. The test is not whether you agree. It is whether you are facing the same suffering together.

Today, find the person you have written off over a disagreement, and look for the bed you are both standing beside. Some shared trouble, some common work. Meet them there, beyond blasphemy and prayers. It may be the only thing that matters.