Today, I choose Coffee
And tomorrow, and the day after...
Trigger Warning: Suicide, Self Harm.
2021 was a tough year; I had been away from my family for a prolonged period for the first time, got heartbroken twice, faced my most physically demanding part of university yet, and was suffering from depression. I had not been a university student for that long and the COVID pandemic had prevented me from the full first-year experience. So, I was going blind into my second year which had to be rushed due to my university’s poor scheduling and planning (which is still a major issue, but I’m in my final year now so I’m counting down the days). In essence, this was a kid who’d been unable to shake off baggage he’d carried from secondary school into university and still had a lot of adaptation to do, being thrown into basically a year away from family without any breaks in between semesters and summer internships. Naturally, this was more than enough reason for depression to develop, but coupled with questions about sexuality and spirituality, body dysmorphia, social anxiety, heartbreaks from a failed relationship and friendship betrayal, and suicidal thoughts felt like an inevitability. I often joked about suicide during that stage of my life, but it became evident that my thoughts were more than a joke one day when I saw a blunt knife in the lab where I was doing my internship and took it to the university residence area without anyone knowing. I stayed up overnight on October 1st and was prepared to give up but after sending messages to some of my friends, who called me multiple times, I was talked out of it, although that didn’t stop me from self-harming.
Most things that happened after that day during my summer internship are a blur, but I remember developing an interest in philosophy as at that point I’d rejected Christianity, which was all I’d known all my life, as a solution for me, which I think was one of the few good decisions I made that year and is something I’ll go into in another post. I’d done a compulsory course on Logic, Philosophy, and Human Existence during my second year, that is before the summer internship, which I enjoyed. During that course, we skimmed through various concepts I highlighted as potentially helpful such as existentialism, nihilism, and stoicism, but none of them struck me the way absurdism did which proposes that humanity’s search for meaning in an inherently irrational and meaningless universe is ultimately a futile endeavor. I read some more about it and quickly discovered Albert Camus’ work, specifically The Stranger, The Fall, and The Myth of Sisyphus. I resonated with the rawness of his ideas and quickly fell in love with them.
“Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” is often said to be a Camus quote. There’s no record of him saying this or writing it down, but I think it perfectly encapsulates what he proposed in “The Myth of Sisyphus.” Camus offers the view that when faced with the reality of absurdity, man has three options: suicide, a leap of faith, or acceptance. In his opinion, acceptance is the only option that should be considered taking. Acceptance of this futile hellscape that is existence as what it is and pushing forward despite is our ultimate expression of freedom. It is through this acceptance that one decides not to kill oneself but to have a cup of coffee instead, or tea, or water. This quote can be interpreted in many ways, but it tells me that enjoying the little grounded pleasures of life is an expression of the freedom that has been given to me by this cosmic silence and indifference. Yes, there are still holes left for me to fill, questions that I still haven’t answered, things I haven’t experienced, and goals I want to achieve, but waking up every day, standing up from my bed, and enjoying a cup of coffee is a triumph and an indication of the strength I didn’t know I had in 2021.
I also love that the “cup of coffee” doesn’t have to be literal. My cup of coffee could be waking up and tidying the bed, taking care of my Finch bird, making sure to text my friends every day, or writing, but the most important thing is finding what drives me to stand up every day and face the ultimate futility of my efforts with my head held high. Yes, none of it is going to matter when I die, but I’m free to enjoy being alive because of that. I’ve grown so much during the two years since that night and part of that growth is choosing a cup of coffee every day.