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Purpose vs Absurdity — Can you find purpose in absurdity?

Article date: 2025-06-20 Format: Blog essay, reflective and searching. Notably open-ended — ends with "I don't know anymore." Raw: 2025-06-20-purpose-vs-absurdity

Core move

Rejects the received answers on purpose (Aristotle, religion, evolution) as "someone else's answers to a question I haven't even figured out how to ask yet." Introduces absurdity (via Camus) not as despair but as liberation — if nothing cosmically matters, you get to choose what matters to you. Purpose becomes a choice, not a mission.

Key extractions

None of them fully land for me. Something always feels slightly off. Like I'm being handed someone else's answer to a question I haven't even figured out how to ask yet.

On absurdity:

Absurdity isn't chaos. It's not depression. It's more like standing in the middle of a busy street and thinking, "Wait. Why am I doing any of this?" And then shrugging, crossing the road anyway.

The reframe:

If nothing truly matters in some grand cosmic way, then maybe you get to choose what matters to you. Maybe that's the point — there is no point and that's okay.

Practical landing:

Not needing everything to make sense. Letting go of the pressure to have a "purpose" and instead choosing small things that feel right. A conversation that matters. A project that excites me. A moment that feels real... building meaning one choice at a time even if it doesn't come with a label.

On purpose's instability:

Things changed. I changed. And with that, the purpose I once held onto slipped away. Maybe it wasn't mine to begin with. Or maybe it just stopped fitting... Maybe purpose isn't permanent. Maybe it shifts as you do.

Closing:

Maybe that's why absurdity makes more sense to me.

Notable feature

This is one of two pieces (with 2025-06-26-the-art-of-letting-go) where Zaid explicitly accepts not-knowing as a landing. He's not performing resolution — he's saying "still confused, and that's okay." That disposition is catalogued at acceptance-of-ambiguity.

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