It comes naturally to us all at the age of 4, but after that, it seems (for all but a few of us) to be almost totally replaced by Living in the Past or Living for Tomorrow.
The beauty of Nowism is that neither Guilt (Man did I screw that up) nor Anxiety (Ohmygod what if...) can live in the universe of the now. Anyone who can banish those twin white snakes from their gut is bound to feel reborn, with the fearlessness, playfulness, and physical lightness of a child.
I first learned all this from Albert Camus, and I swore I'd never forget it. But I did, or rather I let it get behind a lot of other stuff in my head so I could no longer see it.
Then just a week ago I was reminded of Camus and his crystalline, fog-lifting ideas by a writer named Barbara Ehrenreich in Harpers Magazine, and since then he's popped up again and again. I can't say if he is regarded as a Philosopher's Philosopher--or even if he's regarded as a Philosopher at all--but I can tell you that for me he is a Writer's Writer.
Here are just two sentences from Albert Camus:
"The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind".
"I was absent at the moment I took up the most space".
I hope others who once, like me, felt the unburdening power of Camus and his words will rediscover him, and I hope even more that thousands to whom his name means nothing will check him out. All who do, regardless of age, accomplishment, or ancestry will have a chance to feel the white snakes shriveling up before the power of his simple, clear words, and the more who do, the better off we will all be.
I only wish he were here to speak them himself, on CNN, on MySpace, on the floor of the US Congress.
Luckily, he left much for us to read, as indispensable to surmounting the wintriness of our lives, I think, as the almost audible blue of an early spring sky.
"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower". Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960
How could I have forgotten?
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