One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.
– Albert Camus
This quote is taken from Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth Of Sisyphus”. And I wouldn’t blame you if it sounds confusing to you. I had first come across this quote a while back. And while I don’t remember exactly how I felt about it at that time, I think, now, with slightly more life experience, I can relate to it better.
Sometimes it is difficult to know where to go next in life, which path to pick. There are just so many possibilities, so many directions that one’s life can take. It’s not the case for everyone, though – there are people who clearly know what they want from life, and how to get there.
But if you are like me, you probably have been a bit confused, at least at some point, about where your life was headed. I was at such a crossroad recently, and that’s when I realised one interpretation of this quote that was applicable to me.
Of course, different people may have different interpretations of it. And I haven’t read the source essay to know full well in which context Camus said this himself. Still, based on just this one line, my interpretation is simply this: when you don’t know what you want, you decide based on what you don’t want. And sometimes, that gives you enough clarity to know what you wanted in the first place.
But as I was writing this, I realized, it’s not even just about “wanting” or “not wanting” things – it can be extended to other things as well. For example: You discover what kind of a person you are, by finding out what things you just can’t do or support or stand for.
The things that you don’t want are basically paths diverging from the road that you are on currently.
By knowing what we don’t want, what we are not, where we don’t want to end up, etc., we get a step closer to understanding the truth behind it – what we want, who we are, where we are going.
Imagine it like this: you are travelling on the highway, with no specific destination in mind. At regular intervals, there are exits. One exit will take you to city A, another to city B, and so on. As you encounter these exits, one-by-one, by either taking or not taking one of them, you are deciding the final city where you’ll end up, which will ultimately determine what course you took in your journey.
So, I think the point here is when we encounter these “exits” or paths, we should be mindful, as that will determine where we end up in life. Sometimes, we are just so used to “driving”, that we don’t even realise when we make a left turn here or right turn there. We are on “auto-pilot” mode, just going through the motions. But life doesn’t always present a U-turn for you to go back and make a different choice the next time.
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