Absurd Great Man

Before a philosophy can shape a man’s life, he must be able to imagine what it looks like when someone actually lives it.

The Stoics have Marcus Aurelius. His life does not define Stoicism, but it helps us see Stoic principles embodied in a human life. Applied Absurdism is no different. It is one thing to understand conscious participation. It is another to watch it unfold across decades of triumph, tragedy, failure, recovery, and renewal.

What does a lifetime of conscious participation actually look like?

A participant is not a man who finds the perfect arena. He is the man who keeps entering the next one. When one arena closes, he grieves if he must, learns what he can, and steps forward again without demanding certainty or guarantees. He lives without appeal, not because life becomes easier, but because he refuses to place conditions on his participation.

Few lives illustrate that pattern more clearly than Theodore Roosevelt’s. His story is not presented here because every man should become Theodore Roosevelt. It is presented because his life shows what can happen when a man continually chooses to enter the next arena, again and again, over the course of a lifetime.

Just as many readers look to Marcus Aurelius to see Stoicism lived in practice, Applied Absurdism looks to Theodore Roosevelt as one of history’s clearest examples of conscious participation without appeal.

Theodore Roosevelt: Entering the Next Arena

Few lives illustrate the practice of conscious participation more clearly than Theodore Roosevelt’s.

Roosevelt was not remarkable because he occupied great offices or achieved extraordinary success. He was remarkable because he repeatedly entered new arenas without appeal. Again and again, life placed uncertainty, hardship, and loss before him. Again and again, he chose participation over withdrawal.

His life reminds us that a man is not defined by a single arena. He is defined by his willingness to enter the next one.

The defining test came in 1884. On the same day, Roosevelt lost both his mother and his young wife. His world collapsed in a matter of hours. Few men would have been blamed for retreating permanently from public life. Grief has a way of convincing us that our participation has ended.

Roosevelt did leave.

He went west to the Dakota Badlands.

Many biographies describe this as an escape. Applied Absurdism sees something different.

The Badlands were not a Comfort Coffin. They were another arena.

There he exchanged politics for ranching, speeches for silence, and public life for physical labor. He rebuilt himself through long days on horseback, harsh winters, difficult work, and solitude. The wilderness became a place of recovery, not resignation.

There is an important difference between solitude and withdrawal.

Withdrawal closes a man to future arenas.

Solitude prepares him to enter them.

The proof is found in what Roosevelt did next.

He came back.

He returned to politics. He returned to writing. He returned to public service. He returned to leadership. He continued creating, serving, exploring, and building for the rest of his life. Every time one arena ended, he entered another.

This pattern repeated throughout his life. He was a naturalist, author, rancher, soldier, police commissioner, governor, president, explorer, conservationist, and reformer. None of these identities became a permanent refuge. Each was an arena to enter while it was before him. When that arena ended, he accepted the invitation to the next.

Roosevelt never demanded that life become easier before he would participate. He did not wait for certainty. He did not wait until suffering disappeared. He did not ask for guarantees that his efforts would succeed or endure.

He entered anyway.

That is what Applied Absurdism means by living without appeal.

Without appeal is not the absence of grief.

It is not pretending that loss does not hurt.

It is refusing to place conditions on participation.

Roosevelt understood that every arena carried risk. Every victory was temporary. Every accomplishment could be undone by time. Yet he continued to live what he later called the “strenuous life.”

His famous words still capture this spirit:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt is not important because every man should become Theodore Roosevelt.

He is important because he demonstrates a principle every man can practice.

Your arenas will almost certainly be different from his.

They may be your marriage.

Your children.

Your retirement.

Your craft.

Your business.

Your neighborhood.

Your aging parents.

Your volunteer work.

History may never remember your name.

That is beside the point.

The question is not whether your arena is large enough to be remembered.

The question is whether you will continue entering it after life gives you every reason to remain in the stands.

Theodore Roosevelt’s life offers one answer.

Keep entering the next arena.

History remembered Theodore Roosevelt because his arenas were public. The philosophy remembers him because he kept entering them.

Written by Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better.

The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends oneself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he or she fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.