It was in eleventh grade that I was formally introduced to philosophy for the first time. Attending a Christian private school at the time, I took a history of philosophy class as well as a Christian apologetics class, apologetics being the practice of defending the Christian worldview via rational argumentation. Both of these classes reinforced the burgeoning desire within me to know and think more deeply. I wanted to figure out for myself what I believed and to be able to defend those beliefs well with reason and evidence. At first, my love for philosophy was just that: love. I read books I wanted to read, watched the lectures I wanted to watch, and I enjoyed my philosophy-oriented classes immensely. However, as I continued my quest for knowledge, I began to spend more and more time doing philosophy. I began to think and re-think ideas even when I was just at the dinner table with my family or trying to play piano. My research went from relatively deep and moderate to shallow and excessive: constantly typing in new questions, feverishly skimming articles, and buying large amounts of new books I would never read. I became consumed by a once innocent desire to know what I believe. After spending over a year in this feverish mode, wasting countless days on anxiety-driven behavior, and on some occasions losing touch with reality itself, I became obsessed with a new question: what’s wrong with me?

What’s “wrong” with me turned out to be Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). OCD is yet another victim of the modern phenomenon of “therapyspeak”, in which terms for mental health conditions and therapy tools are used in everyday conversation, often stripping these phenomena of their depth and complexity. “OCD” now refers to a condition of being “super organized” or a quirk of needing things to be “just so”. As someone with OCD, this reduction of OCD to “neatness” is frustrating because it minimizes the actual suffering of people living through it. People with OCD are not just people who like their desks neat, but are people who perpetually doubt their reality and themselves. To put it simply: they have lost their trust in the world. 

OCD involves the constant nagging of intrusive, irrational, distressing thoughts which  cause people to perform various rituals to temporarily alleviate the discomfort. Compulsions can be arranging and rearranging objects continuously, counting to a certain number several times, skin picking, mental rehearsals/replays of events, constant checking, etc. These compulsions are often extremely time-consuming and take people away from things they would rather be doing. However, they fear that if they don’t do them, something bad will happen. They struggle to live with uncertainty and trust reality as it unfolds. They need to know that things are stable and “just right”. 

The problem, of course, is that our world and ourselves are far from being “just right”. The world is chaotic and does not follow a neat narrative, people are flawed and fail each other continuously, and there is no guarantee that the beliefs we have are correct or that “everything will be alright in the end”. In many ways, human existence is what philosopher Albert Camus described as “absurd”. The Absurd describes the condition in which human beings long for unity, meaning, knowledge, and coherence, but are met with a universe unable to provide any of those things satisfactorily. Having OCD, I experience the Absurd to, well, an absurd degree. I learned that this world isn’t really something which can satisfy my desires as they usually are. I compulsively long for certainty, stability, and coherence, and yet live in a world of uncertainty, instability, and contradiction. 

  As I tried to navigate through my OCD, I thought that philosophy could help me with it. Sure, I was preoccupied with philosophical questions to an unhealthy degree, but philosophy wasn’t the problem; my mindset was. So, I thought that I could “out-think” my OCD. This was rather unwise of my past self, to put it charitably. My being in my head too much was the problem, and yet I thought I could get out of my head with… more thinking? However, OCD doesn’t always make one clear-headed enough to solve problems well, even if that problem is OCD itself. I thus spiraled further into constant rumination, avoiding concrete reality at all costs; concrete reality was too frightening. Whenever I did go out into the world and inevitably failed in some way, I beat myself up and retreated back into my room, to ruminate some more. OCD thus spiraled into depression and despair; I withdrew from reality and lost motivation to do any of the things I normally love to do.

I did not give up though. I began taking medications to help alleviate my depressive and anxiety symptoms, and began going to therapy to implement some new tools to manage my mental health problems, and while I did have some success at first, I quickly fell back into old habits; I struggled to do things I love like play piano without beating myself up and/or distracting myself with something else, and getting myself to stop ruminating proved to be incredibly difficult. I had grown attached to my rumination and my depression; I even took a weird pleasure in them. Everything seemed hopeless again.

Then one night, while I was having a particularly bad episode, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I began writing. I pulled open a fresh Google Doc, and began writing out a scene related to my struggles. I didn’t exactly have the thought process of “Oh, I should creatively write to help process my thoughts” prior to doing this; it was just something that spontaneously happened. Miraculously, it worked; I became calm again. I was able to process all that was happening. The next bad episode I had, I started writing again. Whenever I was particularly gloomy or stressed, I would write my way out, writing scenes, poems, stream-of-consciousness prose, and more. Writing became a new ritual, though this one was free of compulsions.

At some point during this time, I watched another philosophy lecture. The presenter opened up his lecture with a story about a New York Times interview with Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, one of the founders of beloved animation company Studio Ghibli. In the interview, the journalist asked him, “Can you tell us how to live? How do you live?” This sort of existential question is what Miyazaki often tries to answer in his films. Miyazaki’s response to this question was to give a light chuckle and say, “Well, if I knew how to live, then I wouldn’t be making movies.” As the lecturer relayed this story, I had an epiphany: this is what I was doing with writing. At my lowest moments, when I had no idea how to live or keep going, my psyche forged a new path forward with writing. Writing became my way of coping with the world and myself, even when I don’t understand either of them fully. Miyazaki’s answer also struck me with the levity with which he embraced his non-knowledge. He laughs and then says, “I don’t know. Here’s the thing I do instead.” It was inspiring to me, and filled me with a warmth and hope I didn’t have before.

As it turns out Camus already had his own description of what Miyazaki does with filmmaking: revolt against the Absurd. Miyazaki does not see the impossibility of knowing how to live as an obstacle. Rather, it becomes the very driving force of his work. He is able to enjoy life and exalt it in his movies, not because he has resolved the tension between the desire for meaning and a silent universe, but because he has learned to inhabit that tension well. In his films, he portrays the beauty already present in existence, while also creating what Camus calls “substitute universes”. These are universes teeming with the unity and style the absurd universe lacks. If you have ever watched a Miyazaki movie, you will know what I am talking about. Through films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, Miyazaki doesn’t just create movies; he creates universes you want to live in.

Now, I will never make something as quality or as renowned as a Miyazaki movie. But rebellion against the Absurd doesn’t have to lie exclusively in beautiful and famous works of art. It doesn’t even have to lie in art itself; one can rebel against the human condition in a plethora of ways. You can start by just loving life as it is, by immersing yourself in the present and attending deeply to the world around you. While this is often incredibly difficult in the overstimulating time we live in, the reward is invaluable. I often walk along the academic mall at night, and in those moments of quiet tranquility, I no longer need to heed to my compulsions to find rest. The world doesn’t need to give me total knowledge. The plodding of my feet on the concrete, the gentle breeze rustling around me, and the light of the moon; all of these fill my heart with a peace and joy no amount of compulsive questioning could ever give me. The world may not care about me, but I care about it. That is rebellion.

OCD is oftentimes a dreadful thing to live with; it is the disease of the Absurd. But in illuminating the Absurd, it also provides me with my rescue. In his major work discussing the absurdity of existence, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus ends it with a discussion of the titular myth. For Camus, Sisyphus and his futile struggle to endlessly push a boulder to the top of a mountain, only for it to roll back down to the bottom, acts as an allegory for the absurdity of human existence in a universe without a God or any other kind of foundation (although it should be noted, Camus did think humans are in a much better condition than Sisyphus is). Camus’ interpretation of the myth is fascinating. Rather than assuming Sisyphus is miserable, he sees him as someone who finds consolation by immersing himself in the present. Sisyphus is able to find a strange sort of peace amidst his struggle by loving his situation and embracing his absurd condition. I have always loved the final passage from The Myth of Sisyphus, which has in many ways become the mantra of my life with OCD, and is an appropriate place to end this piece:

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.