Happy by Oneself

Rieux has just told Rambert that there is nothing shameful in preferring happiness. He means it. The doctor is not trying to guilt him into staying. Rambert thinks about it and then says this. It may be shameful to be happy by oneself.

Nobody talked him into it. That is the important part. He had his escape arranged, he had every justification, and the one person with the standing to judge him had explicitly let him off. He stayed anyway, because a happiness that required him to leave everyone else behind had stopped looking like happiness.

Self-sacrifice as a rule would be the wrong lesson. Camus was suspicious of people who made a career out of that. It is a much narrower observation. Some pleasures cannot survive being enjoyed alone. You can have them, and they turn into something else in your hands.

Most of us know the feeling in smaller forms. The good news you cannot quite enjoy until you have told someone. The meal that is somehow not worth cooking for one.

There is something good you have been keeping to yourself. Give it to somebody and see whether it gets larger.