We tend to think of love and clear thinking as separate, perhaps even opposed. Love is warm, instinctive, forgiving. Analysis is cold, detached, critical. Surely love means overlooking flaws, while lucidity means cataloging them. Camus insists otherwise. Without clear sight, what we call love is something else entirely.

Consider what passes for love when clarity is absent. The parent who smothers a child, calling it protection. The partner who controls, calling it care. The friend who enables destruction, calling it loyalty. These are not failures of feeling. They are failures of seeing. The emotions are genuine, but they operate in darkness, and so they miss their target or strike the wrong one altogether.

True goodness requires knowing the actual person before you, not the version you wish existed or fear might exist. It means understanding the real consequences of your actions, not just their intended ones. This is difficult. It demands that we love people as they are while seeing them as they are, that we remain tender without becoming blind.

Camus wrote this line in a novel about a plague, where sentimental gestures meant nothing and only precise, informed action could help. The doctor who saved lives was not the one who cared most but the one who saw most clearly what needed to be done.

Today, ask yourself: Where has my love gone blind? What would it mean to care with open eyes?