It sounds almost wholesome. Cultivating habits. Like tending a garden, building routines that carry us through the day. And in a sense that is exactly what we do. We wake at the same time. We take the same route. We order the same coffee. We build a life that runs without requiring our attention.

Camus sees through this. In The Plague, he describes the citizens of Oran as people whose lives are organized entirely around habits and commerce. They are not suffering. They are not in crisis. They are simply bored. And boredom, rather than prompting them to seek something deeper, drives them to fill every hour with predictable activity.

This is how unawareness works. It does not announce itself. It feels productive. The calendar is full. The days pass smoothly. But smoothness is not the same as being alive. A day can be efficient and completely empty at the same time.

Habits are not the enemy. We could not function without them. But a life built entirely of habits is a life that no longer requires you to show up for it. The machinery runs whether you are paying attention or not. And one day you realize that years have passed in which you were technically present but never quite there.

The question is not whether to have habits. It is whether you are still awake inside them.

See also: Not a Moment Wasted | Absent While Present | Learn more about absurdism