Futility and Absurdity

In early times in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him. “I do not need a lantern,” he said. “Darkness or light is all the same to me.” “I know you do not need a lantern to find your way,” his friend replied, “but if you don’t have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it.” The blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him. “Look out where you are going!” he exclaimed to the stranger. “Can’t you see this lantern?” “Your candle has burned out, brother,” replied the stranger.

My Comment: Sometimes life is futile. Sometimes we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Sometimes good luck is disguised by bad luck and vice versa. Sometimes a kick in the ass propels us forward, and sometimes it’s just a kick in the ass.

The absurdity of the human condition is both very painful and very laughable. It’s an ironic and incongruous and poignantly imperfect. But that’s also half the fun of it. Life comes at us fast, and sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to laugh despite the speed of it all.

Between the pain of life’s lessons and the medicinal laughter of cultivating a good sense of humor, there is the unvanquishable absurdity of life kicking us around. Sometimes all we can do is kick back with a ruthless sense of humor, not despite irony and incongruity, but because of them.

Dive in! The water is warm (and cold and safe and dangerous)  But don’t let that stop you from living; from dancing through the glaring futility and venomous absurdity of it all with a humor of the most high.