Wake up. Get on the train. Work. Go home. Sleep. Wake up again. Then one morning you think, "How many more decades of this?"
In "God is dead. So why do we keep living?" I asked how to live if life's meaning isn't given to us from the start. One writer faced that question head-on: the French writer Albert Camus.
The man who carries a boulder forever
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was punished for deceiving the gods by being made to push a huge boulder up to the top of a mountain. But just before it reaches the top, it rolls back down. He walks down again and pushes it up from the start. Forever.
Meaningless labor, repeated without end. I think it's one of the cruelest punishments imaginable.
In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Camus held up this man's situation as a picture of human life itself [1].
What is "the absurd"?
The question Camus took on in this book was whether life is worth living. The word he used for it was "the absurd."
Human beings can't help looking for meaning in their lives. But the world gives no answer. The person demanding meaning, and the world that stays silent: that mismatch is the absurd [1].
The world isn't absurd in itself. The absurd arises where the one who asks and the one who doesn't answer face each other.
Don't escape. Revolt
When people realize there is no meaning, what do they do? Camus held that this realization is no reason to give up on living.
Nor did he jump to the hope that "surely there's a meaning prepared for us somewhere," pretending the question had never been asked. What Camus chose was to keep living while knowing there is no meaning. He called this "revolt" [1].
Look without fooling yourself. And then, don't get off.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy
At the end of the book, Camus comes back to Sisyphus. He turns his eyes to the moment the boulder rolls away and Sisyphus walks back down the mountain.
Sisyphus knows his fate is meaningless. Knowing that, he puts his hands on the boulder again. Instead of lamenting his fate, he takes it on as his own.
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
That's where the book ends [1].
Our boulders
Daily work, strength training, writing: they all feel a bit like pushing a boulder uphill. Whatever you build up, the next day it feels like starting from zero again.
But read through Camus, it looks a little different. The goal isn't for the boulder to stay at the top. The time spent pushing it is your life itself.
In "A goal without a system goes nowhere," I wrote about managing daily actions rather than results. Even when results don't go the way you want, you can choose what to do today. Take on that repetition not as a punishment, but as your own work.
Maybe no meaning has been prepared for the repetition of our days.
Still, the one who puts their hands on the boulder is you.
Tomorrow morning, as you push the boulder up again, try imagining yourself just a little happy.
References
1. Camus A. (1942). Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus). Paris: Gallimard.