Applied Absurdism

I recently watched a news story about a father who made a simple commitment. He and his son would play catch every day for an entire year.

The cameras followed them through the months. Day 56. Day 119. Day 201. Sometimes they threw a baseball in the backyard. Other days it was a football or whatever happened to be nearby. The details changed, but the ritual remained the same. Every day they entered the same small arena together.

The story itself was heartwarming, but it was the interview afterward that caught my attention.

The father spoke passionately about what the project meant to him. He called it intentional parenting. He hoped that years from now his son would look back on this season of life and recognize how much it had shaped him. He wanted to build memories that would last a lifetime. He was determined to see the commitment through because he believed it would become one of the defining experiences of his son’s childhood.

Then the reporter turned to the boy and asked him what he thought.

His answer was wonderfully ordinary.

“I’m just playing catch with my dad.”

That single sentence contained more philosophy than either of them probably realized.

Both father and son were participating in exactly the same arena.

One was living with appeal.

The other was not.

Applied Absurdism defines appeal as placing conditions on entering the arena. We often think of appeal as something dramatic; waiting for ultimate meaning, demanding certainty from the universe, or postponing life until we receive some grand justification for living. Camus certainly confronted those questions. Yet appeal also appears in much quieter ways.

Sometimes appeal looks like asking today’s experience to justify itself through tomorrow’s outcome.

The father’s intentions were good. There was nothing selfish about wanting to become a better parent. There was nothing wrong with hoping his son would cherish those afternoons years later. Most loving parents probably feel exactly the same way.

But notice where his attention naturally drifted.

He wasn’t simply throwing a baseball.

He was trying to create a future memory.

He was hoping to shape the man his son would someday become.

Again, none of this is wrong. It is deeply human. We all want our efforts to matter. We all hope that the people we love will someday understand what we tried to give them.

Yet there is a subtle danger hidden inside that hope.

The present moment quietly becomes valuable because of what it might eventually produce.

The arena is no longer enough on its own.

The son, however, had no such burden.

He wasn’t trying to preserve a childhood memory.

He wasn’t wondering whether these afternoons would change his life.

He wasn’t measuring the experience against some future payoff.

He was simply playing catch with his dad.

He had entered the arena completely.

Children often do this naturally. They become absorbed in the game itself. Adults, on the other hand, have a remarkable ability to leave the present while our bodies remain there. We eat dinner while thinking about tomorrow’s meeting. We take family vacations while worrying whether everyone is making enough memories. We work on hobbies while wondering whether they’ll ever become successful. Even our moments of rest are often judged by whether they make us more productive later.

We have learned to place conditions on participation.

The irony is that the experiences we most want to preserve often slip away the moment we begin trying to preserve them.

The richest conversations are rarely the ones we planned.

The best adventures are often unexpected.

The moments that become lifelong memories seldom announce themselves beforehand.

They are simply lived.

This is what it means to live without appeal.

It is not refusing to care about the future.

It is not pretending that goals don’t matter.

It is not abandoning responsibility or long-term commitment.

Living without appeal means refusing to make the future a condition for fully entering today.

The father wanted to build something lasting.

The son was simply throwing a baseball.

In many ways, I suspect the son understood the deeper lesson.

Perhaps one day he really will look back on those afternoons with great affection. Perhaps they will become some of his favorite memories. But if they do, it won’t be because he spent the year trying to create memorable moments.

It will be because he entered each day’s arena completely.

This is the invitation Applied Absurdism extends to all of us.

Drink your morning coffee without asking whether it will become a cherished memory.

Take your spouse to dinner without wondering whether you’re creating the perfect marriage.

Go fishing with your friend without trying to manufacture a life lesson.

Play catch with your son because he is standing there holding a glove.

The universe offers no guarantees about which moments will become significant. It remains silent on those questions, just as it remains silent on so many others.

What it does offer is today’s arena.

A conversation.

A walk.

A meal.

A game of catch.

These ordinary arenas ask for only one thing.

Your participation.

Perhaps that is enough.

Perhaps the fullest life is not built by chasing moments that will matter someday, but by entering the moments already before us without demanding they become anything more than they are.

The father was trying to create a memory.

The son was simply playing catch with his dad.

If there is a lesson hidden in that backyard, it may be this:

Life is lived one arena at a time. The moments that endure are often the ones that were never asked to prove they would.