Read Albert Camus's "The Stranger", and then this really nice essay "The Myth of Sisyphus". Both are stories of heroes caught up in a sudden, irrevocable, and downright absurd turn of fate. Rather than losing their heads over it, they rise up to stare back in the eyes of the enormous absurdity facing them - with calm indifference - and keep going, in utter defiance of it!
Sisyphus was a Greek mythological figure, who was condemned by the Gods to an eternity of futile and hopeless labor - wherein he had to roll a huge rock up a mountain, place it at the top, see it roll down, and start all over again at the bottom! - and repeat this whole pointless sequence ad infinitum!! - what Camus calls the "unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted towards accomplishing nothing"! In the essay, Camus interestingly imagines and explores Sisyphus's state of mind as he descends the mountain. Here are some wonderful excerpts! -
I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step towards the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
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 towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.And here's a full online version, for your reading!