Angst

Albert Camus claims in The Myth of Sisyphus that anxiety can lead to either suicide or to freedom, but usually we try to hide in the illusion of ongoing normality. But why can Angst either lead to suicide or to freedom? It startles me. Stuck in today’s gridlocked Bandung I had an epiphany. I suddenly realized that down-and-out at the bottom of the deepest abyss – writing one’s suicide notes – one can burst into laughter: no more, no more fear. Affirming freedom in dealing with anxieties entails to laugh fate right in the face. Out of the courage to face paradoxes, uncertainty can resolve in a poetic work of art: life – and one self. Perhaps.