Benevolent Protector

Defending, Tireless

Night and Day

Fear

Solemn Advisor

Watching, Pensive

Always Awake

Judgement

Decisive Leader

Choosing, Wary

Endless Blockade

Loyal Guardians

All so

Unaware:

Pain kills

from the inside

Our sweat was flowing freely by the time we reached the water. We nearly tipped the canoe--full of gear and supplies--multiple times while trying to launch in the dense, swampy entrance to the lake. But finally we were out.

My parents had agreed to the trip so long as we brought long range walkie talkies. This is an odd detail. We were seventeen at the time.

"We made it, over." I said as we stepped ashore. We were excited to relax and enjoy the summer evening. It wasn't much later that we realized we had very little for dinner. We had agreed in advance to split the meal responsibilities; I brought breakfast and my friend was in charge of the evening meal.

He brought microwave popcorn and a single can of alphabet soup--with no pot.

We made a fire, heated the soup, and burned popcorn kernels. My friend--we'll call him Mitchell the genius--decided to try for a fish while I gave up all for lost and broke into the vodka.

Miraculously, before sundown, Mitchell caught an edible sized bass. We had, in keeping with the theme, only a butter knife and little to no knowledge on fileting fish. I think it was an especially dull butter knife. That, or the vodka had begun to set in. I felt poorly for the fish. At any rate, we ate fresh bass and got drunk on marshmallows and smirnoff.

I was awoken in the middle of the night by Mitchell the genius frantically throwing logs into our tent. The thin walls were flapping wildly.

"It's raining!" shouted my travel companion.

If we hadn't been drunk, I suspect we would have been terribly frightened by the storm. My parents informed us after(the radios had been turned off for the night or died. I can't remember) that there was lightning and a few trees knocked down from the wind. Mostly I yelled at Mitchell for throwing logs at me and we fell back asleep.

At breakfast there was bacon for the hangover. And we made our groggy way home.

I think, increasingly, of how simultaneously foolish and lucky we were. The island was small--with a handful of short trees that our tent was perched in the middle of. We could have fared much worse.

I believed, then, that I had a lifetime ahead of me.

I catch myself believing, now, that I am on the other side of that lifetime; looking back as though through a one way tunnel. Listening to the drip, drip of the ever present trickling stream of death.

It sounds like a rainstorm.

Lightning could quite easily have taken us that evening. I could quite easily have triple my years still to come.

Yet here I stand: clutching my can of alphabet soup and microwave popcorn and cursing my luck. Believing, wholeheartedly, that Mitchell won't catch a fish.

I've not believed in miracles for a very, very long time.

Yet here we all are.

We had quite a mouse problem in that house. It was in the country; perched on a hill in a copse of trees surrounded by old farm fields. My father inherited the house and the fields from a doomsday prepper. My parents didn't want the property and tried to sell it for years--renting to irresponsible tenants in the interim.

I remember my mother receiving a frantic phone call from one of said tenants that a bear had broken into the house. "Broken in" was a generous term to the bear: the door was frequently left open and there was garbage on every surface--inside and out. No wonder no one would buy the place.

Eventually my parents gave up trying to sell and moved in. The tenants didn't leave for a while so we lived downstairs in a shared, single bedroom while they clomped around and yelled at each other upstairs.

On more than one occasion my brother and I we were waked in the night by my mother screaming about a mouse skittering across her bedsheets.

My father set up a bucket of water in the basement with a ring of peanut butter around the top and a little ramp to go from the ground to the lip of the bucket. The mice were meant to climb up the ramp, reach for the peanut butter and fall into the water; drowning.

We caught buckets and buckets of mice that way. My father would dump the bucket a little ways into the trees surrounding the house every morning. The clear water mixed with bloated mouse corpses caught the morning sun and glinted like diamonds.

At some point the tenants moved out and renovations began. Every opened wall and ceiling and floor revealed mouse shit and mouse nests and mouse corpses. They lived and died in that place.

We lived in that house for over a decade. Always, there were mice. Even as I sat in the brand new kitchen after dinner or breakfast or whatever time of day it was, there the mouse lay: gasping for breath and trembling with the approach of death.

My father disposed of the trapped, folded, dying mouse. I don't remember if he put it out of its misery or not. At any rate, it joined the others in the surrounding woods.

A mouse problem.

It seemed so obvious then: mice were bad and a nuisance and a pest and we must rid ourselves of them. These days, as I empty the traps in my own home and set fresh ones, I think of another problem I was told I had while growing up.

A purity problem.

It went something like this: I am an inherently evil being who will have feelings and desires that will fill my whole body. But because I'm not a grown ass, married man, these feelings and desires are wrong. Sinful. Malevolent. Not to be trusted.

So I was taught to set traps: 'keep your thoughts captive'. 'Bounce your eyes'. When the cute girl at school reaches out and your mind is blown because it doesn't feel real that she might think about you much the same way you think about her--shut it down. You can't act on it. Not without guilt and shame and eternal damnation, anyway.

Collect your sexual desires in a bucket, drown them, and toss their bloated bodies into the woods.

Have you seen a living mouse up close? They are timid, fluffy, shivering things. They look like they have about as much fortitude as a corn flake.

Problems.

How quickly and callously we label things.

She plunged her head so deep in the petals that the smallest of flowers almost swallowed her up
Pulsing thorax, kicking legs, and periodically buzzing wings led me to think it was an especially delightful nectar deposit

Worth it

I walk through this yard every day
Getting the kids to school
Getting myself to work
Picking up groceries
Going on a walk
Cutting the grass
Garbage day

There is a virility to the hustle
My lungs feel bigger and my back feels straighter
In a world of founders and vibe coders and startups and investors it feels good to be productive

Accomplished

But to watch this young bee delight in the nectars of her prize flower, I had to slow down

I followed my one year old daughter around the yard listening to her say "wow" fifty thousand times in a row
Every rock, stick, pebble and patch of dirt is a new galaxy to her

I was thinking about goals and to-dos and budgets and timelines
Half awake

But then we saw this bee
The first of the season--of life, for my daughter
She crouched, hushed, and looked at me before turning her large eyes back to this spectacle of joy

A hard day's work feels good.
But what is it for?

Know where you're going
Be where you are
A billion galaxies
A single star

Tigers only attack if they think you can't see them coming, they say.

I must have thought I was going to need that information some day because I still remember it over fifteen years later.

I have not yet been to India, and I've not yet been stalked by a tiger.

At least, I assume so; I've never worn a mask on the back of my head.

Then again, for all I know, India and tigers don't exist

I did go to Thailand once, though. By plane

What a thing

"Here, get in this metal tube and it'll take you to Thailand"

"Whatever you say!"

And so they tell me I've been to Thailand

We are on a giant rock

Catapulting through a vacuum

(They say)

And I pretend to agree

Like I have any choice or say in the matter

My make believe understanding is a salve for the existential dread that lurks like a stalking tiger around every corner

In truth, I know very little

I possess even less

But this, I do have:

Knowledge, experience of suffering

Knowledge, experience of you

Lo, how much more bearable the suffering

In light of you

I was a laborer

The minister had a face that looked like the gnarled bark of a very old tree

He was the lead carpenter and I don’t think he liked me very much

Understandable: I barely knew how to hold a hammer

The eucharist was a horribly dry peanut butter and jam sandwich

Blood of Christ, jellied for you

The cathedral was a cold and wet, freshly framed bunkie on the side of a cliff

The incense was a mason’s soggy, wilted cigarette

My nose was cold and the secondhand smoke stung my lungs

The frigid drizzle turned to a downpour as we finished the sacraments in silence

“Goddammit” said the minister

The sermon

The parish was located on an island and the building-in-progress still had no ceiling. So we closed the service and headed home.

The driving rain felt like stinging nettles on our faces as we sped home in a roofless, tin boat

The next service I attended was in the bowels of an oil refinery

We were shoring up the ceiling to replace a rotting steel lintel

The call to worship was a bout of laughter from the foreman

The millwright had told a dirty joke

We had an altar call when the new, thousand pound lintel nearly slipped off the forklift and onto our heads

All attendants swore loyalty to Christ that day

Another service was in the streets of Tokyo at 2am with some friends. Our plane had just landed and it was dark and cold and rainy and we were waiting for a ride and a place to sleep

We sang together to pass the time

Most recently I attended mass in the taproom of a local brewery with a friend

We drank beer in the middle of the day and laughed about being sent to hell

Confession

I met God when putting my 5 year old daughter to bed and we giggled at Grover from Sesame Street trying to sing about the hole at the bottom of the sea

And I saw the person of Christ when Jonathan Van Ness taught strangers the delicate art of loving themselves on Queer Eye

“In the world and not of it”
is what was said

So we formed an organization
Where we met and broke bread

For a time, there was life
In the things that were said

But an institution needs cashflow
Treasurers
And salaries

A board of elders
Who must at all costs
Be kept happy

Is this really what he meant?

I wonder

Would I feel the same if we had recordings of Jesus?

Somehow a lot (but not all) of us start out thinking someone else is going to give us the answers we're looking for

Like wisdom is a directive

Given for us to know, not consider and decide

Like if I blamed the teller for not permitting withdrawals from an account I never invested in

"Pastor, you betrayed me"

"Teacher, you betrayed me"

"Lover, you betrayed me"

Granted, many have and many do and many more do much worse

And I pray for justice and ask for mercy and mostly it feels like no one's listening (but me)

I've noticed

These things do not hurt less when the villain suffers

When justice is won I am still periodically alone and afflicted

Existence looms and holds itself over me like a cloud made of darkness and sunlight and galaxies and grass and trees and water and people and love and hate and joy and sorrow

"Teller, tell me what to do with it all"

"Sir, I am only here to facilitate"

Sweet, gentle 'thank you's delicately whispered to crisp winter air

Breath forms a steamy incense as it passes through my lips

Always I come back to this

Though I am less and less sure how it works

Sometimes I'll be driving

Holding the steering wheel as a sacred relic

"Thank you"

It's not always focused or for anything in particular

When it is, the objects of my thanks are small and consistent and many

I listen as the rubber drones on the asphalt; deep and low and steady

Somewhat Gregorian

It always feels like there's a listener

One being thanked

Lately

Progressively

I see them nodding with approval

Not to say, "you're welcome"

More like

They know and delight in how healing this is for me

I am less and less sure how it works

Tonight I stand on crisp snow

In a freshly shoveled driveway

For the fifth fucking night in a row

Incense breath envelops my face

Stars dance

The new snow insulates sound and provides a holy pause

"Thank you"

I sigh, pick up a sweater

Left arm, right arm, torso, hood

Add it to the pile

My folding laundry--to her--is interpretive dance

She watches - mouth gaping, neck craned

As one looks at a monument

Pants this time

The movements to her are mesmerizing

Laundry is the boulder to my Sisyphus

An unending, relentless task I am doomed to repeat until wealth or old age release me

She witnesses the ancient ritual; steeped in magic and mystery

An art I have taken years to perfect

And

What if

When I look at stars

Neck craned

Mouth gaping

Witnessing an ancient universe; steeped in time and mystery

What if a weary warden guides the moon round again

A tired mother gently breathes on planets to coax them round the galaxy

What if the stars twinkle because a yawning custodian stokes their bright burning fires?

Endless tasks, shaped by the perceiver

Perhaps, then, all is gift and magic and mystery

Sisyphus: keeper of his own key

For THE end of days

And who could blame him?

Death is a frightful mystery

Much easier to face it

If all you leave behind is damned, anyway

.

.

.

Maybe the original sin is a belief that one is not worthy

Jesus was heard to say "I have come to set you free"

But the listeners were hard of hearing; strained by centuries of religion and oppression and pain

Perhaps, with a bit of clarity, they might have heard

"You've been free the whole time"

.

.

.

If we cannot face the darkness

Will we ever love the light?

Would I accept crucifixion

If there was no resurrection?

Would I follow the example of Jesus

Without the reward of heaven?

.

.

.

And so, at last, we come to hope

What the fuck do we do with hope?

I suppose it's nice to imagine

Someone coming to fix it all

Lord knows I can't

You all seem to be struggling, too

I have noticed, however

It feels less shitty when we do the struggling together

And perhaps that's all there is to it

Pack animals in need of a pack

Learning to enjoy the lack

--

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness.

And God said, 'Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.' And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked.

'What is the purpose of all this?' he asked politely.

'Everything must have a purpose?' asked God.

'Certainly,' said man.

'Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,' said God.

And He went away.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

Did not call a counsel of the Gods

Requesting placement on this planet

I did not beg to be born

Hoping Zeus would hear my plea

I did not submit an eighty year plan

“What I’ll do with my time on earth”

Ripped into life

Bound by gravity

My first sound a quivering, agonized protest

Forced to breathe oxygen and eat food grown in dirt

Cultivating longevity

And at some point

Though I did not ask for it

The choice became mine

To stay or to go?

Forced to come here
Allowed to leave

Given a gift I cannot refuse
Told I do not have to keep it

“To be or not to be
That is the inquiry”

Or something

Living is no longer that which must happen to me

Shall I engage it?

Here there are snuggles and coffee and chocolate
Love and joy and peace and laughter

Genocide

Corruption

Loneliness

Murder

An endless and inescapable dissatisfaction

Why stay?

Because I want it to be me

When my children need a shoulder to cry on

When my partner celebrates a victory

Mourns a loss

I want it to be with me

When dawn erupts from night and stars synchronize across lightyears

When wind tickles trees and waves wrestle with beaches

When friends offer hugs and handshakes

When children die too young and wicked men live too long

I want to witness

to Lead

to Follow

Participate

This is where I want to be

—

I would have considered the end of this poem extremely dissatisfying not so long ago. Part of me still sort of does. It leaves me with an itch I must scratch. Somehow ‘wanting to be here’ wouldn’t have been a good enough reason to be alive.

“Give me resolution!”

I think that’s why I leaned so hard into the evangelical flavor of Christianity for a while—there seems to be an inevitable and incessant pull toward satisfying answers in my experience of that community. But I’ve come to think—or have been shown? Who actually knows how this thing works?—that, like the cliffhanger ending of a movie demanding a sequel, the tension of existing is the thing that makes existing worthwhile.

Let me sing with the drunkards and smoke with the vagrants

Give me an eternity with the queer and transgender

That they may teach me honesty

Let me burn with the oppressed

The women who sought abortion

The men who married each other

The children who murdered and were murdered to protect rich men’s comforts

Give me an eternity in hell with the whore and the prostitute

That we may learn of self love and lament for stolen innocence

Give me the outcast, the weary, the burdened, the heavy-laden, and the marginalized

Give heaven to the religious

That they may play flutes and sing dirges

Let them cry “Lord, Lord” and complain of streets that are paved with too thin a layer of gold

Let them bemoan the sub-par cooking, cramped accommodations, and less-pearly-than-I-expected gates

As for me and my house

Give us an eternity in hell

Better still

Give us no eternity at all

For it is oft with aching heart I wonder

Should the soil my innards plunder

Would my soul begins again

Never to face an endless end

And then, alas, it comes to me

Of this fear, too, can one be set free

So let us come, at last to rest

In goddam blessed

Eternity

Why do you ponder the limbs of a tree?

What do its spreading arms give to you?

Why do you hunt for reflections of the universe in the movements of a deer?

When you cry to the stars, why expect a whisper or an answer?

Oh, seeker, you have tried it all, no?

You have called on the heavens to bestow meaning on your life

You have looked for it in loved ones

Reducing their infinite value to tokens for your spending

You have travelled
Clicked
Talked
Listened
Begged
Screamed
Abused
Stolen
Given
Lost
Won
Sung
And Wept

All this with a fragile hope to receive the meaning for which you desperately long

But the heavens appear silent

Or perhaps they have already spoken

Do the legends not tell of a maker who formed thee in their image?

Could it be
Seeker, you are not
But rather

Maker

It is you who looks upon a tree and names it such
It is you who notices its production of oxygen
How its branches form like the veins in lungs
And you that call it life giver

Meaning Maker
It is you who one day looks on the tree and says
“No longer shall you give life by your limbs and leaves. Rather you will give life by being the shelter for me and my children.
“I will teach you to stretch and straighten your limbs in such a way that they will form the roof of my dwelling, the table from which we eat, and the beds in which we rest".

Meaning Maker
It is you who looks on the deer and names it graceful
And you who changes the graceful creature into sustenance for your body

Meaning is not yours to find, Maker.

It is yours to create.

To give a very quick crash course: what Camus refers to as ‘the absurd’ can be thought of as a place where our reason ceases to satisfy us. As an example: science can get down to extremely tiny ‘building blocks’ of existence. Reason is very useful here. But when we discover atoms and quarks and other things, the mind can begin to question ‘why’ or ‘where’ or ‘how’ these things originated. Camus posited that there is no ‘concrete’ answer to these questions: nothing that can survive the ‘blows’ of reason. Not atheism, not religious faiths, not agnosticism, not ‘pure’ science, etc. The absurd(for Camus) is a painful experience of existential dread where we are left without a satisfying sense of meaning or greater reason for being--either because the belief we look to doesn’t offer one(atheism, science, etc.) or it requires a bit of faith(religion, spirituality, etc.). Camus ultimately came to the conclusion that a healthy approach to the absurd is to face it completely and not try to suggest that reality is otherwise. Basically: Camus doesn’t like ‘bull-shitters’. He believed there is a contentment to be found in this acceptance of the absurd. This is his primary reason for criticizing Kierkegaard.

In short, Kierkegaard was a philosopher who wrote about the significance/importance of faith and its role in the face of a notion such as the absurd. More on this later.

Camus goes on to say that Kierkegaard’s overall philosophy is one of many existing ‘negations’ of the absurd.  Camus finds that these negations are an abandoning of reason: “Those redeeming negations…negate the obstacle which has not yet been leaped over,” (Camus, Myth, p. 42).  Another reason for Camus’s criticism of Kierkegaard is the appeal to anything that exists beyond the known world: “They always lay claim to the eternal, and it is solely in this that they take the leap.” (Camus, Myth, p. 42).  This criticism of Kierkegaard is very compelling.  But it is difficult to call it valid.

To evaluate whether Camus’s thoughts on Kierkegaard are valid, we must examine what Camus assumes to be true about reality.  Camus believes that what is real is only what is known as absolutely as possible.  He does not subscribe to the concept of a God or higher power.  This would be for Camus a cowardly attempt to avoid the pain of the absurd.  We see this when Camus imagines Kierkegaard proclaiming the existence of the eternal as an avoidance of despair: “If man had no eternal consciousness…what would life be but despair?” (Camus, Myth, p. 41).  Camus’s response is very telling: “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable,” followed by, “…the absurd mind, rather than resigning itself to falsehood, prefers to adopt fearlessly Kierkegaard’s reply: “despair.”” (Camus, Myth, p. 41).

While Camus’s fierce commitment to the tension and ‘painful opposition’ of the absurd is admirable, it requires the assumption that reason can only get one so far.  The assumption is not, as Camus notes on page 51 of The Myth of Sisyphus, that there is nothing else to be known*.*  Rather, it is that what we have now is all we have to work with: “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it.  But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.” (Camus, Myth, p. 51).  From this, Camus adopts a resolute stance toward the absurd: “It is merely a matter of being faithful to the battle…War cannot be negated.  One must live it or die of it.  So it is with the absurd.” (Camus, Myth, p. 93).  Again, Camus’s commitment to facing the absurd without compromise is admirable.  But this does not mean that the absurd is absolutely all we have.

Interestingly, when examining Kierkegaard’s philosophy as presented in Fear and Trembling, we find him speaking of the absurd and its role with the ‘knight of faith’ on page 70: “He resigned everything infinitely, and then took everything back on the strength of the absurd.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 70).  It is worth noting that Kierkegaard’s ‘absurd’ is very much the same as Camus’s.  The primary difference is that for Kierkegaard, God is the embodiment of the absurd: “God blesses Abraham with a son, demands the son, then gives a ram and rescinds the demand for the son.  This is absurd.”  When reading more about Kierkegaard’s ‘knight of faith’, we find them renouncing everything as a form of submission to the absurd/God and being content much like Camus’s absurd man is content: “he has felt the pain of renouncing everything…and yet to him finitude tastes just as good as to one who has never known anything higher.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 69-70). Kierkegaard’s approach to the absurd is demonstrated best in the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac coupled with a concept Kierkegaard calls ‘the teleological suspension of the ethical’. Crash course incoming.

According to Kierkegaard, the teleological suspension of the ethical is a necessary concept to understand the paradox that lies in the actualization of faith.  The ‘ethical’ in this case refers to what we could call generally accepted concepts of right and wrong (do not murder, do not steal, etc.). Kierkegaard calls these general concepts of right and wrong ‘the universal’.  As said on page 83 of Fear and Trembling: “The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone…” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 83).  Kierkegaard then reasons that any one who does not align with this ‘universal’ is what we may refer to as a sinner: “As soon as the single individual wants to assert himself in his particularity, in direct opposition to the universal, he sins,” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p*.* 83).

This then means that an individual’s purpose(telos) could be found only in aligning with the universal and suspending or forfeiting any of their own individual sense of purpose for the sake of the universal.  Kierkegaard finds this highly inadequate and unacceptable.  For Kierkegaard, faith is expressed not by aligning with the universal, but by becoming a particular who sets themselves above the universal—specifically in their relation to the ‘absolute’.  The absolute, in Kierkegaard’s argument, can be thought of as God or some higher power that exists above and outside of humanity.

In their relation to the absolute, the individual goes beyond the universal to address and be addressed by the absolute directly: “the single individual as the particular is higher than the universal…as the particular, stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 85).  This would traditionally be considered sinful because it requires operating outside of the dictation of the universal. But this, Kierkegaard says, is precisely where faith begins: “Then how did Abraham exist?  He had faith.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 90).  It is only because of faith that going beyond the universal is not simply sin: “If that is not faith, then Abraham is done for and faith has never existed in the world.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 84).  This is what is meant by the ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’: going beyond conventionally accepted concepts of right and wrong(universal) to relate to the absolute(god, higher power, etc.) according to one’s purpose(telos).

Much of Kierkegaard’s argument in Fear and Trembling hinges on this teleological suspension of the ethical.  He points to Abraham being hailed as the father of faith despite having every resolution to commit murder of his own son: “If this is not how it is with Abraham, then he is not even a tragic hero but a murderer.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 95).  For Kierkegaard, faith cannot begin without suspending the ethical.  And if suspending the ethical is not done through relation to the absolute for some higher purpose, it is merely sinful. So to Kierkegaard, faith doesn’t receive the absurd(God demanding a sacrificed son that he had previously promised as a blessing) as meaninglessness, but rather takes a resolute stance--much like Camus’s resolute acceptance of the absurd.

Seeing that Kierkegaard’s submission to God and Camus’s facing of the absurd are the same in nature, one wonders why Camus takes such strong issue with Kierkegaard’s philosophy.

A key lies in what the implications of the absurd are for each.  Camus submits to the absurd and receives it as a signal of meaninglessness.  Camus’s submission to the absurd says ‘This is what I have before me to do.’ and there it stops with no request for meaning.  Kierkegaard also ultimately submits to the absurd but receives it differently.  Kierkegaard’s submission to the absurd says ‘This is what I have before me to do and I am convinced it is what is right to do’.  For one, the outcome of the absurd is meaninglessness.  For the other, it is certainty in rightness of action.  These conclusions, while having similar origins, are nearly complete opposites: one embraces meaninglessness, the other embraces everything as meaningful.

Kierkegaard makes the following proclamation in Fear and Trembling: “Philosophy cannot and should not give us an account of faith, but should understand itself and know just what it has indeed to offer, without taking anything away, least of all cheating people out of something by making them think it is nothing.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 63).  He then says that while there is much he cannot understand or make sense of, this is not justification to abandon a sense of something higher: “God’s love is for me, both in a direct and inverse sense, incommensurable with the whole of reality.  I am not coward enough to whimper and moan on that account, but neither am I underhand enough to deny that faith is something far higher.” (Kierkegaard, Fear, p. 63). 

Camus’s criticism of Kierkegaard requires a heavy assumption that what we have in front of us now is indeed all we have.  As Camus himself states, this is not true absolutely (P51, Myth).  As demonstrated, both Camus and Kierkegaard begin with the absurd and, with a slight deviation in assumptions, land at very different conclusions. The above proclamation of Kierkegaard demonstrates that a lack of knowledge does not require one to abandon the notion of the eternal, and a clinging to such does not have to stem from cowardice as Camus suggests.  Therefore, Camus’s criticism of Kierkegaard is not valid. 

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O'Brien. 2nd ed. Vintage International, 2018.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Fear and Trembling. Translated by Alastair Hannay. Penguin Books, 2003.