Most of us live on autopilot. We wake, commute, work, eat, sleep, and repeat. The routine carries us forward without requiring us to think. Days blur into weeks, weeks into years. We call this “getting by” or “making a living,” but Camus saw it more starkly: we are actors moving through a play we never questioned, on a stage we never examined.

Then something shifts. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s a birthday, a loss, or simply a Tuesday afternoon when the fluorescent lights feel unbearable. The question surfaces: Why am I doing this? What is all this for?

This moment of weariness is not a breakdown. It is a breakthrough. Camus calls it “amazement” because suddenly you are seeing your life as if for the first time. The routine that once felt solid now reveals itself as a construction, a set of choices you made or inherited without awareness.

Today, notice the rhythms that carry you. Not to abandon them, but to see them. The unexamined life may be easier, but it is not yet fully yours. Clarity begins when the “why” finally arrives.