The Stranger, The Headlines and The Interstice

Ever since school ended, life has basically felt like one long waiting period. I always thought I’d love the free time — no deadlines, no early mornings, no routine. But as it turns out, this weird break between school and college — the interstice, as I like to call it — brings its own set of surprises.

As an attempt to revive my half-dead reading habit, I picked up this short book called 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus, which is about Meursault, a guy who couldn’t care less about what society expects. He drifts through life detached, like the world’s some bizarre performance he refuses to act in. While I found his character rather odd at first, the more I read, the more I weirdly started connecting to it.

Because, for some reason, even right now, the world feels just as absurd. Whether it is the numerous wars flashing across the news or the deadly air crash in Ahmedabad, leading people to suddenly remind each other to "live in the moment" — yet rational thinking makes us focus more on fixed plans for careers, aspirations and whatnot.

Amidst all this, as I was trying to make sense of everything happening around, it somehow clicked that maybe the clarity that I was seeking is not the true sign of real life. In reality, it is this chaos, the noise and in the end our ability to be indifferent to certain things and to cherish some things more than others.

Maybe that confusion — that feeling of not fitting neatly into society’s well-rehearsed show — is my own little Meursault moment, and being still stuck in this interstice, watching it all unfold, half-in, half-out, I guess it’s starting to seem okay.

Maybe for now, it’s enough to just take the world as it comes - confused yet curious, one unfinished day at a time.