The Myth of Sisyphus

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The story goes like this: Sisyphus is a nasty piece of work who cheats death twice. The gods punish him with an eternal task of rolling a boulder up a mountainside. When the boulder is at the peak, it then rolls back to the base and Sisyphus must repeat his task for all eternity.

Camus and other philosophers have had some interesting takes on this that go beyond the original "wow, that's bad - and forever?" interpretation handed to us by the ancients. Camus concludes that we must suppose Sisyphus happy, and I agree.

Obviously, Sisyphus is become a metaphor of life, which is full of never-ending cycles of chores, personal maintenance, work, and other grinding minutiae that we can decide in an emotional spasm to be too much to bear for the little meaning that they contain. The thought then is that Sisyphus is truly punished, for he has no escape of suicide - no exit from an unbearable, meaningless, absurd existence. But that only supposes that Sisyphus is imprisoned by his past and trapped by his future and takes no account for Sisyphus' ability to still choose how to view his situation.

It is in that choice of the present moment that we find our greatest power. It is in our choice, made in the now, that we are able to work through the sediments of the past experiences that they not force our course. In our choice we do not walk into the future as a beast into a trap but with knowledge that absurd as life is, with all kinds of things happening to all kinds of people without regard to goodness or badness of things or people, we are nevertheless always capable of making choices in the face of disasters. Life for the Sisyphean man may be no better than what it is, but it is also no worse than what it is. Sisyphus faces his worst-case scenario every time the boulder is at the peak: and the worst thing that happens, happens. Nothing more. Sisyphus can choose to see that as punishment or he can choose to see that as a relief - the worst is over.

Sisyphus has no hope for an impossibility - he knows that the boulder will always roll down. I will make a tangential comment that some philosophers supposed Sisyphus could break a piece of the mountain with each trip and that, no matter how small each piece was, over eternity the mountain would be flattened and that the boulder eventually becomes easier to roll until there is no slope and the boulder once rolled, stays rolled. I would say those philosophers walked right into the heart of Buddhist teachings with that move. And if Sisyphus is allowed to break down the mountain, then his hope for one day transcending his punishment is not an impossibility. And let us not cloud the issue with a question of what if Sisyphus dies before he finishes that task: remember that Sisyphus is already dead! We are presuming no escape here.

And now the tangential comment comes back to the thread of discussion. If we combine the repeating cycles of life, how good and bad things happen to good and bad people without any sense of justice, and our eventual mortality, we have the absurdity of existence, but with an escape in death. Camus is very much bent on asking the question, is life worth living? His answer of "yes" is revealed in the choices one makes. If we resign to let life happen to us or to be guided by passions, we are lost in meaninglessness. But in making choices, we make meanings. And here, I would say that there is no new thing under the sun - this is the heart of the Bhagavad-Gita. Camus' thoughts on absurdity? I tipped my hand with the "no new thing under the sun" comment, as that is in Ecclesiastes. But, for me, the way Camus combines the ancient resonances brought forward a new realization.

Because I can choose, my past is not a prison and my future is not a trap. Even though I will die one day, the truth is that most days, I don't die. And even if I'm doomed to an eternity of living each day on this earth, never to escape with death, I can yet choose. And, in my choices, there is meaning. I do not expect life to be free of setbacks or disasters. I do not welcome them, but I do expect them to happen. When they do, I can make new choices and carry on with a meaningful existence.

And now I'm going into my own area here - what is a meaningful existence? I say it is when results of my choices produce an interaction that is loving and caring. Something in those emotions, those feelings, is both eternal and evidence that others exist as surely as I do. I think, therefore I am - I feel love, therefore you are. Not all relationships will be loving and caring for their duration - the boulder rolls back to the base of the mountain. But, just as Camus said we could suppose Sisyphus to be happy, you can suppose the same for me, for I will be willing to try again. The boulders that do not roll back to the base of the mountain are true victories of life for as long as they last. And the boulders that crash back to the bottom are opportunities to try again.

The thought occurs that Sisyphus has other ways of outlasting his punishment - the stone could wear down to a grain of dust or a groove be worn in the mountain that eases the way before it, too, becomes a flattened path. And for every twist the absurd, fickle gods could throw at Sisyphus, the eternal nature of things means that he eventually wears them down. The only end for Sisyphus is that he either dies and stays dead or transcends his punishment through action or attitude.

I come out of this experience with the realization that my past is not a prison and my future is not a trap. My choice in the now is where I create meaning for my existence, which can transcend mortality in ways that I did not understand when I was a child, but nevertheless felt.