Chasing Ghosts and Craving Chaos

Understanding why we create chaos, chase the past, and resist the present.

The Absurd Truth

Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus was the first philosophy book I read, and it remains the one that resonates the most. In the book, Camus presents Sisyphus as the archetype of the absurd hero. A man condemned to push a rock up a hill for eternity, only for it to roll back down each time he reaches the top. It is a futile and meaningless task, yet Sisyphus is not a tragic figure in Camus' eyes; he is a figure of defiance. He embraces the absurdity of his condition, not as a curse, but as the only true certainty. He does not seek meaning in an indifferent universe; instead, he creates his own meaning through his struggle.

In this, Camus argues that we are all Sisyphus in our own way. Each of us pushing our own metaphorical boulders, searching for purpose in a world that refuses to provide it. The moment Sisyphus acknowledges the absurdity of his plight and accepts it, he is free. He is not broken by his fate; he transcends it. He recognizes the joke, the cosmic irony of existence, and smiles anyway. The realization that happiness and acceptance can exist, not because life has inherent meaning, but because we do not need it to in order to keep pushing forward.

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” - Albert Camus¹

The Boulder of Service

For years, I carried the weight of service like Sisyphus pushing his boulder. In uniform, the task was clear: each mission, each deployment, another cycle of ascent and descent, reinforcing a purpose that felt eternal. The struggle itself was purpose, not the illusion of victory or the destination. The weight of duty was tangible, grounding me in an existence where I understood my role. But when my service ended, the boulder vanished, and I was left standing at the bottom of the hill, hands empty, staring at a world that moved on without me. The structure that had once shaped me was gone, and with it, the illusion that meaning had ever been promised. I was no longer a warrior on the hill but a man searching for a mountain. The silence was deafening, the absence of struggle suffocating in its own way. The boulder, as much as it had burdened me, had also defined me, and without it, I was left questioning whether I had ever truly existed beyond the weight of my own exertion.

“The past is never where you think you left it.” - Katherine Anne Porter²

The Chaos We Crave

The military teaches us to thrive in organized chaos, to embrace unpredictability within a structured framework. This is the chaos of precision, of controlled disorder where every moving part has its place, and we take pride in our ability to function under pressure. In this environment, unpredictability is expected, but it exists within boundaries that can be navigated with skill and experience. We laugh off disasters, we adapt when everything around us falls apart, because we know that even within chaos, there is an underlying order.

But when we step out of that world, when the noise fades and the war drums fall silent, something unsettling happens. The structured chaos is replaced with something more erratic, unorganized chaos. The kind that is directionless, lacking the sharp purpose we were trained to endure. A quiet home, a stable relationship, a life free from imminent disaster. These should be the rewards, yet for many of us, they feel like a void. We are conditioned to anticipate struggle, and in the absence of organized chaos, we flinch at the unstructured stillness, mistaking it for the calm before a storm that never comes.

The mind, trained for conflict, struggles to rest in its absence. And so, we create the chaos ourselves. Subconsciously, we sabotage what is good because we have been conditioned to believe that peace is an illusion, that stillness is a prelude to disaster. The ghosts of chaos do not always come with nightmares; sometimes, they come with the inability to accept peace, to trust that a life without conflict does not have to be a life without meaning.

I didn’t realize it at first. I thought I was just restless, just adjusting. But then it hit me like a brick wall; I was setting fire to my own life, ensuring that I never strayed too far from the chaos I had learned to love. The difference was clear, organized chaos had once given me purpose, but unorganized chaos threatened to consume me. Understanding that distinction was the first step toward reclaiming control, toward forging a new kind of order in the midst of life's uncertainty. To embrace unpredictability again as if it was still the natural order of things. To thrive in knowing chaos is not the enemy; it is the constant, the reliable companion.

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” - Friedrich Nietzsche³

Chasing Ghosts

For many veterans, the post-service world is not cruel, but indifferent. The camaraderie, the mission, the structure, all of it disappears overnight. What remains is the silence of normalcy, a world that neither glorifies nor condemns, but simply moves forward. In that silence, many of us chase ghosts: the ghosts of who we were, of what we did, of a life that once had a weight we could feel pressing against our shoulders. Some chase it in memories, some in destruction, others in desperate attempts to force the past onto a present that no longer recognizes them.

But these ghosts are not just phantoms of memory; they are echoes of identity, remnants of a self that once had purpose embedded in action, in a life defined by movement and mission. We do not just long for the past, we seek the gravity it once gave us. Without it, we drift in an existence that feels untethered, as if cast into a vast, indifferent sea without a compass.

Yet, the ghosts we chase are not the same as the ones who haunt us. The ones we chase offer a false promise. The illusion that if we could just recapture what was, we would feel whole again. The ghosts who haunt us are the lingering truths we refuse to confront, the understanding that we can never return, that what was, is irretrievable. The struggle is not just about letting go of the past but about learning to stand firmly in the present without needing the weight of what once defined us.

There is no resurrection in chasing ghosts. The past is a shadow, not a destination. The task is not to reclaim it, but to honor it without being bound by it. Meaning is not behind us; it must be forged in the step forward, even if that step feels like walking into an abyss of uncertainty.

“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.” - Jan Glidewell⁴

A Universal Struggle

But this struggle is not exclusive to veterans. Everyone, at some point, faces the collapse of their own constructed purpose. The career that defined them ends. The love that gave them direction fades. The identity they built crumbles under the weight of time and change. When the structure dissolves, we are left with the same absurdity Sisyphus knew, the universe does not care, and it never did.

The corporate professional who dedicated decades to their work, only to be replaced by a younger workforce; the devoted parent whose children have grown and no longer rely on them; the athlete forced into retirement when their body can no longer keep up with their ambition. Each of these individuals experiences their own version of chasing ghosts.

There is a unique kind of grief in realizing that what once gave life direction is no longer there. It is easy to mourn what was lost, to feel adrift in an indifferent world that continues without concern. But in that grief lies an opportunity: to acknowledge that we were never promised meaning, only the ability to create it. Sisyphus’ struggle is universal, and so too is his defiance. The challenge is not in reclaiming what was, but in pushing forward despite knowing that the summit will never hold our boulder forever.

“No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.” - Heraclitus⁵

The Defiant Perspective

We should not search for false meaning in the ruins of what was. We should not cry out for justice in an indifferent world. Instead, we forge our own meaning, not as a gift from the cosmos, but as an act of defiance. The past will always whisper, but chasing ghosts will not bring them back. Meaning is not behind us; it is only ever in the step forward.

I am not suggesting that we reject life, nor to demand from it what it will never give. I’m merely suggesting that we embrace the struggle, to laugh at the absurdity of it all, and to choose, always choose, to keep pushing. Not because it matters. But because we decide that it does.

I do not claim to have mastered this lesson. Some days, the ghosts feel closer than the present. Some days, the weight of what was presses harder than the lightness of what is. Some days I long for the chaos I was forged in, other days I suffer in the moments of the peace after. But in those moments, I remind myself that happiness is not lost in the past, it is found in the acceptance of now. The boulder will always be there. The choice is whether to curse it or to push it with defiant purpose.

We all must decide what to do when our boulders vanish, or when they roll back down the hill once more. The ghosts will always be there, lingering at the edges of memory, but they are not meant to be followed. We are meant to face forward, to stand in the fire of absurdity, and to keep pushing. Not because the universe demands it, but because we, in our defiance, make the choice to.

1. Camus, A. (1991). The myth of Sisyphus (J. O’Brien, Trans.). Vintage International. (Original work published 1942)

2. Porter, K. A. (1962). Ship of fools. Little, Brown and Company.

3. Nietzsche, F. (2006). Thus spoke Zarathustra (A. Del Caro, Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1883–1891)

4. Glidewell, J. (n.d.).

5. Heraclitus. (2001). Fragments (B. Haxton, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published ca. 500 BC)