‘The Gods,” Albert Camus writes, “had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”
Your New Year’s resolution, which begins today, is your rock. Every day you will push it up the hill, only to watch it roll back down again. Some day soon, maybe a week from now or in mid-February, you will lace your sneakers for that new 2-mile daily run and your mind will go to work on you. “Why am I doing this? It’s cold out, and I hate running. My energy level hasn’t increased, and I haven’t lost a pound. It’s making me miserable, and I don’t want to do it anymore.”
And you won’t. You will abandon your rock and rejoice at being free of the weight. But the feeling won’t last because, as Camus says, “one always finds one’s burden again.” You will make other resolutions, on arbitrary dates throughout the year, in the never-ending pursuit of a better version of yourself. You will envision a thinner you, and the diet will begin. You will wake one morning with an indescribable emptiness and decide that a new hobby will fill the void. You will act unkindly toward someone you care about, and vow then and there to become a better person.
That is the absurdity of the human condition and the dark side of hope: Every breath is expelled in the pursuit of an imagined future. “I hope that denying myself chocolate makes me thinner, because then I will finally approve of me.” “I hope painting becomes my passion, because then I will be fulfilled.” “I hope that by doing good deeds, my life will have value.”
For their punishment to constitute torture, the Gods rely on the same kind of hope: “If I can just get this rock to the top of the mountain,” they want Sisyphus to whisper to himself, “then everything will be better.” Disappointment, they know, is inherent in the wish.
But the Gods underestimate him. Even amid this eternal and futile labor, Sisyphus finds joy in his burden, his fate. He becomes the “master of his days.”
“The struggle itself toward the heights,” Camus writes of Sisyphus, “is enough to fill a man’s heart.”
Torture isn’t pushing the rock, it’s pushing the rock toward a destination. So run not to be a runner, but to feel the cold air in your lungs and hear the whooshing sound of the world as you move through it. Paint not to be a painter, but because you love how the brush feels in your hand as it streaks color across a once-blank canvas. Be kind not to be a better person, but because it feels unnatural to be otherwise.
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” Camus says, and it’s sacred advice. To find joy in the doing is the best way to exist in the world.
It is the secret to life and resolutions.
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