Awareness brings a gift and a wound at the same time. The gift is that you see your life clearly. The wound is that you see it passing.

Once you start paying attention, you notice how little stays. The evening light shifts before you can name its color. The conversation you are having will end. The child on the floor will be taller by next month. The season will turn. Nothing that is happening right now will happen again in exactly this way.

This is the anguish Camus describes. Not despair, not depression, but the specific pain of someone who has become too aware of time to be comfortable in it. The moment is impalpable. It has no edges you can grip. You cannot hold it in place any more than you can hold mercury in your palm.

And yet Camus does not say he wants to stop feeling this. He does not wish for numbness. The anguish is proof that he is awake, that the moment matters to him, that he has stopped sleepwalking through his days. The pain of watching time pass is infinitely preferable to the alternative, which is letting it pass unnoticed.

Awareness costs something. It is still worth the price.

See also: Every Minute | The Weight of an Hour | Learn more about absurdism