Imagination, justice, beauty, art, misery eradication, repair and mend (what has been torn or a torn world), wisdom (“cold frugality of the wise”), openness to the world (in harmony with it), finding meaning in life, tending to friendship, cultivation of happiness.
Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.
Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays.
via Popova. Also, Camus on meaning, Weil on attention as grace and generosity.
