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 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 after and so on and so on. I wore my shirt, 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 frequently thinking about our lunch together.
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 us to the philosophy of the absurd. Man’s 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 were 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 human’s need to understand, against the unreasonable silence of the world, forms the core of The Myth of the Sisyphus.
In the fourth chapter of his essay, Camus writes about Sisyphus. Sisyphus was the clever albeit evil king of the ancient city state of Corinth. He is 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 human’s search for meaning and the absurdity of it. You are born, you learn to walk, you go to school, go to college, work at the office, get married, have kids, buy a house, have grand kids. 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 every day. 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 1 hour. But I got ready for 15 minutes, took an elevator for 1 minute, the car ride was for 30 minutes, crossing the river was for 5 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 are going, or what you are going to do when you get there. You won’t think about eating while 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. I am happy.
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Collection of essays, films and existential musings 