Searching for meaning is nothing new to us. Finding purpose in our work, relationships, and environment is the engine that keeps us running. Purpose provides us with a sense of direction and allows us to navigate the complex maze that is our daily lives.
It is one thing to find meaning. But it is another to realize that there could be nothing at all. As we grow older, our ever increasing awareness sheds light on the arbitrariness and partiality of our personal beliefs, preferences, and aspirations. We become accustomed to the indifference that the world has on them. Our lives become stripped of certainty, realizing that real meaning is not out there but rather something that we ourselves are creating, projecting to reality.
This outstripping of meaning is inherent in our getting caught up in routines, mundane tasks that take up most of our time. Waking up, eating, commuting to work, work for hours, then commute again, eat and go to sleep. Then rise up and do all these again for days, weeks or years. At the midst of the cycle, we then courageously, curiously ask: for what are we doing all these things?
The resolution to our seemingly confusing and absurd predicament lies in our ability to understand our situation. In this, an allegory drawn from the ancients offers us console, empathy and perspective in the form of The Myth of Sisyphus.
The Myth of Sisyphus
King Sisyphus was a king of Ephyra, also known as Corinth in Greece. A ruthless tyrant as well as a cunning man, he goes to great lengths to show off his power, even killing visitors in his palace just for pleasure. This deliberate disregard for the value of hospitality caught the attention of Zeus, the ruling god, and found it unpleasantly offensive. Sisyphus's actions continued to stir Zeus's anger, and Sisyphus's punishment was looming in the distance.
Zeus' wrath was finally incurred when Sisyphus interfered in one of his affairs. It was when Zeus abducted Aegina whose father, a river god named Asopus, made his way to Ephyra to search for his daughter. Ephyra at the time, was suffering from drought. Sisyphus told Asopus where Zeus have taken his daughter in exchange for creating a spring for his city. Furious, Zeus called on Thanatos, the god of death, to lock up Sisyphus in the underworld, ending the troubles he's causing once and for all.
When Thanatos arrived to bring Sisyphus to his fate, he found the latter rather in submission. Sisyphus spoke to him with flattering words, describing how much of a powerful and magnificent god Thanatos is. In doing so, Sisyphus gained Thanatos's trust. So much so that he was able to deviously ensnare Thanatos in chains.
While Thanatos was bound, the cycle of life and death was in discord. No one could die. Ares, the god of war, was getting frustrated because of this. It removed the the thrill of his battles. He then went in search of Thanatos and freed him of his chains.
Sisyphus knew that the Gods would be back to get him. But he had another plan in mind. As he was nearing death, he asked his wife Merope to throw his body into the public square, thereby denying himself a proper burial. His soul, washed up on River Styx, came upon Persephone, wife of Hades and queen of the underworld. Using his cunning once more, he was able to persuade Persephone to let him go back to the land of the living to punish his wife for disrespecting his burial. It came with a condition, that he would go back within a day, but this was never meant to be kept by Sisyphus.
Sisyphus's trickeries would end when Hermes, the messenger of the gods, dragged him forcibly to Zeus. His punishment is by all means, a task. A mundane and futile task. He was condemned by the gods to climb a mountain while carrying a huge boulder, only for it to fall back down as he was about to approach the summit. Then he would start over again, repeating the task for all eternity.
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| Sisyphus, 1548 by Titian |
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The Human Condition
As if punished by the gods, we too carry boulders of our own. Carrying it day after day in the mountain that is our daily lives. But are we really condemned to this fate like Sisyphus? Can finding meaning behind our repetitive tasks forever be an elusive thing?
In his analysis of the myth, Albert Camus, a French-Algerian novelist, identified actions that we tend to take in the face of meaninglessness. The first two for him are not viable: Physical suicide and Philosophical suicide. He rather suggests a third option which is the acceptance of our absurd fate, being happy carrying our boulders whilst knowing it is all futile in the end.
Physical suicide is the deliberate ending of one's life abruptly. Philosophical suicide on the other hand pertains the abandonment of one's independent thinking, taking up meaning instead from external ideologies or doctrines. The problem with these two options is that they are both avoidance of taking responsibility for our attitudes. They serve as escape from the truth of our situation.
The third option weighs upon the premise that just like any other problem, conflicts can only be solved by facing them directly. In our daily routines, seemingly devoid of meaning, we can learn to be conscious agents, choosing how we will think and react, instead of constantly feeling hopeless. For Camus, living itself is a form of revolt. A revolt against our inescapable fate by choosing to be content and happy doing our mundane tasks.
We are not damned but rather it is our interpretation that makes us so. We can always choose how to react and what attitude to take. As living becomes increasingly complex in the years we spent our adulthood, we, in turn, increasingly lose our grip towards reality. Through this, we learn to let go. We come to know that there are things beyond our control and we are humbled to submit to our fate like Sisyphus. But there's one thing that will remain with us no matter what, and that is our conscious choice, our inner freedom to decide our thoughts, feelings, and our actions. This inner freedom is what makes us meet our fate with hope. Because realizing that we can maintain control, at least of our inner world, paves the way towards our creation of a life with meaning for ourselves, even if the external world doesn't seem to contain any.
Rebelling to the Absurd
Albert Camus calls our effort to search for meaning in our strange world "absurd." When all our attempts to reconcile purpose with purposelessness ceases to make sense, the only thing we can do is to revolt-to rebel by living intentionally. Considering the bore that our mundane tasks make us feel, we can nevertheless see them in a new light. We can consciously create meaning rather than wait for meaning to come.
With this freedom comes responsibility on our part, it ask us what meaning then would we create? What will be our unique form of rebellion? What is the thing that will make us smilingly carry our boulders over and over again without losing our motivation or sanity?
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At The Base Of The Mountain
From the heights of philosophical inquiry, we come back down to the base of the mountain. We come back down to our present life situation. Just like Sisyphus, we will carry our problems, conflicts and pains up the mountain again as we face tomorrow's challenges. But we will be climbing wiser, aided by the consolation and sense of freedom gained from The Myth of Sisyphus. We will roll our boulders with hope, smilingly and willingly, indifferent to life's absurdity and taking utmost responsibility for the meanings that we want to create.
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