Surmounted by Scorn
“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.” ALBERT CAMUS · THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS
Scorn is a strange prescription. We are usually told to accept what we cannot change, to find the lesson in it, to let go. Camus recommends something with more spine. Look at your fate. Refuse to be impressed.
He is specific about what scorn is not. It is not bitterness, which is a kind of submission that simply complains while submitting. It is not cynicism, which pretends nothing matters. Scorn says the situation is real, it is bad, and it does not get to define you.
Then the second half of the sentence opens something unexpected. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. Camus is careful with the word sometimes. He does not promise joy. He says it is available, and he puts it beside sorrow without ranking them, as though both were legitimate responses to the same facts.
The point is that the facts do not choose for you. Two people carrying the same weight can inhabit it in entirely different ways, and neither one is deceiving themselves. The mood is not a consequence of the circumstances. It is a separate act.
Something has been acting as a verdict on your life. Notice that you never agreed to the terms. You are not required to.
