Sisyphus

For those not familiar with the myth of Sisyphus it is a simple tale of a guy who, to cut a long story short, annoys the gods. His punishment is to spend eternity pushing a rock up a hill. Before it reaches the top it rolls back down and Sisyphus must start the task again. The concept of his punishment is eternal labor pursuing a pointless and unaccomplishable task.

So what was his punishment? Traditional interpretations seem to revolve around the eternal labor. To be a punishment one must be able to determine the negative and that negative must be one which is wholly different from normality. To look at our everyday lives mankind struggles on day by day completing hard labor of some form or other, whether mental of physical. Sisyphus is aware if his fate. He sees eternity ahead of him and understands the futility of his work. He is aware of the meaning his life has (or rather does not have). By contrast mankind tends not to understand its end goals, has little or no clue what meaning their life has (or does not have). Sisyphus had everything he needed to be happy, or at least, had no less than the rest of us to be happy. So his punishment is not the eternity of fruitless labor, but his inability to understand that his life is no worse than it was.

All pretty deep stuff. But think about what this means to you. While most of us don't have the joy of rolling rocks up hills, we work in similarly pointless projects or jobs where little of any consequence is actually accomplished. When that job is done we look to the next bigger job that will always seem to be more satisfying, better paid (although we don't have time to spend it), accomplish more (will make a difference). But the grass is rarely greener. We face a new rock, another hill.

So like Sisyphus, to avoid a life of punishment through eternal (or at least life long) labor we need to understand the value of what we do. Not in terms of the rock we roll but why we roll the rock. If we understand that then we can see that happiness does not come from the size of the rock or the size of the hill. Accepting the futility of rock rolling and being happy anyway is the only way to avoid the punishment of Sisyphus.