Happiness, Unhappiness 

The Vision of Albert Camus, by Maria Popova

“For the first time in history,” Bertrand Russell asserted in reflecting on the impact of the Industrial Revolution, “it is now possible to create a world where everybody shall have a reasonable chance of happiness.” Indeed, we’ve pounced on that chance with overzealous want: 

Ours is a culture so consumed with the relentless pursuit of happiness, its secrets and its science, that it layers over the already uncomfortable state of unhappiness a stigma of humiliation and shame. But unhappiness can have its own dignity and can tell us as much, if not more, about who we are than happiness.

Abelardo Morell

In a 1956 letter to a hospitalized friend, Camus explores how body and mind conspire in sorrow and happiness:

"No, it's not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life. What you must do now is nothing more than live like everybody else. You deserve, by what you are, a happiness, a fullness that few people know.

Yet, today this fullness is not dead, it is a part of life and, to its credit, it reigns over you whether you want it to or not. But in the coming days you must live alone, with this hole, this painful memory. This lifelessness that we carry inside of us - by us, I mean to say those who are not taken to the height of happiness, and who painfully remember another kind of happiness that goes beyond the memory.

Sometimes, for violent minds, the time that we tear off for work, that is torn away from time, is the best. An unfortunate passion."