I was getting ready to go to this
restaurant in downtown. I was supposed to
meet some friends for lunch. I was
excited as I haven't seen them in such a
long time. I already was picturing how I
would walk in and how they would wave
happy to see me. I was thinking about
what we would say to each other, what
would we do and so on.
One last look in the mirror, ordered a
cab, took the elevator down, walked across
the apartment complex, waved at the
driver, spent 30 minutes in the cab
thinking about the upcoming lunch, paid
the taxi guy, walked across the canal,
walked towards the restaurant and finally
opened the door. My friends excitedly
waved at me.
We were there for about an hour,
after that I exited the restaurant
walked across the canal, called a cab,
rode back home, walked across my
apartment complex, took the elevator up,
entered my apartment, spent the rest of
the day doing other things while also
thinking about the lunch.
Now what does this have to do with an ancient cruel
Greek king.
Let me explain
In 1942 French philosopher Albert Camus
published an essay called
The Myth of Sisyphus
In this essay Camus introduces
the philosophy of the absurd.
Man futile search for meaning, purpose and
clarity.
He points to the absurdity of the idea that all of this will
ultimately lead to something
He says, we build our life on the hope for tomorrow, yet tomorrow brings us closer to death
and is the ultimate enemy.
People live
their lives as if they are not aware of
the certainty of death. Once stripped of
its common romanticism, the world is a
foreign, strange, and inhuman place.
True knowledge is impossible
and rationality and science cannot explain the world.
Their stories ultimately end in
meaningless abstractions, in metaphors
This is the absurd condition and from
the moment absurdity is recognized it
becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all.
The absurdity of the eternal
contradiction in humans need to
understand, against the unreasonable
silence of the world forms the core of
The Myth of Sisyphus
In the fourth
chapter of this essay Camus writes about Sisyphus.
Sisyphus was the clever albeit
evil king of the ancient city-state
of Corinth. He's known for his trickery
and deceit. He had trapped, cheated and
escaped death twice, which led Zeus to
sentence him to what he thought was the
ultimate and cruel punishment. Something
much worse than death itself.
Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up a
hill in the depth of Hades, the world of
death. The boulder would ultimately roll
back down and Sisyphus has to roll the
boulder up the hill all over again for
eternity. Camus presents his
Myth of Sisyphus as an allegory to humans search
for meaning and the absurdity of it.
You're born, you learn to walk, you go to
school, you go to college, work at the
office, get married have kids, buy a house
have grandkids, one day just as you
entered in some corner of the world,
you quietly exit. The world goes on, the
earth still spins, the indifference
continues.
Most of us continue to live some version of this everyday.
Day in and day-out we live ruthlessly.
We return back to our apartments, sleep and start
the whole thing all over again, just as
Sisyphus gets ready to push the boulder
back up for eternity. But yesterday when
I met my friends at the restaurant I
realized something.
I met them for all of one hour, but I got
ready for 15 minutes, took an elevator
for one minute,
the car ride was for 30 minutes, crossing
the river was for five minutes, and I did
them all again when I was returning to
my apartment. I realized that hidden in
plain sight was my life.
The mundane. Yeah I get a job, ask a girl
out, make a film, meet my friends
those are important moments of my life.
But majority of my life is not that. It's
the mundane things that make up most of
my time in this earth. Things like
cooking alone while my balcony is open.
Cleaning my apartment riding a bus or a
taxi to get somewhere, eating delicious
food, watching ants crawl, bicycling
walking, lots and lots of walking, the
quiet moments, the mundane is my life and
once I began noticing the mundane, I was
captured by its brilliance.
The mundane is beautiful beyond words. Once you
realize this fact, you begin noticing it
more and more and you are not in your
own head thinking about where you're
going or what you're gonna do when you
get there. You don't think about eating
while you're cooking, you simply cook. You
don't think about your destination while
you ride, you simply enjoy the beautiful
ride.
Camus ends his essay like this
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 toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Sisyphus is happy. I feel alive. I breathe in and out and I am happy.
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