One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

“Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.”
― Emil Cioran


A few weeks back, I was sitting in the food court of a mall with some friends having Taco Bell and I had just finished reading 'Nausea' by Jean-Paul Sartre. In the book's Afterword, the editor mentioned Albert Camus drawing comparisons and parallels between the two greats. The editor also mentioned the famous conclusion from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus - one must imagine Sisyphus happy. This thought was left lingering in my mind. I carried it with me for a few days until that evening in that food court where I saw something which etched it permanently in my brain. I had a moment of epiphany. I saw a woman who was not well; you could see she was suffering physically just by the look of her. She was handed over a tray of food from a shop and struggled to hold it together. Her hands were shaking and a person standing next to her had to support the tray so it did not fall on the floor. That man held the tray together and helped the lady to her table. It was a daunting affair to watch someone struggle to complete such a minuscule task. I got back to my tacos but after a few moments, I looked at her again. A man had accompanied her at her table. To my surprise, they were clicking pictures of the food and taking selfies - smiling. I was perplexed and a bit frustrated. I could not fathom their need to project themselves happy for either memories or social media. I could not understand their need to tell someone or themselves that they were having fun or that things were quite perfect when I had just seen that they were far from good, let alone perfect.
At that exact moment, the thought hit me. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. We are condemned to make choices throughout our life. The very freedom we believe is our salvation hinges upon us making choices for every moment of our consciousness and that takes a toll on us. It is an impossible feat to get through a day. And if you achieve it, the means used are beyond any ridicule. You must do what you need to do to live throughout the day. If it means taking selfies and photos of your food, then be it. If that little action gives your morsels of happiness to live another day, no one in the world has the right to judge it or you. I must imagine you are happy. I cannot from a viewer's standpoint tell you that it's all vain, that your life sucks and that your efforts are meaningless. You are aware of that and you are making choices and taking actions to get through it and that is all that matters. Tomorrow the struggle will start again but that does not make today fruitless. If we are doomed to make choices throughout our existence we will make those that help us get through it, therefore, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Art, Artist, and Are They?

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” ―  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov The democratization of technology has made tools once exclusive to professionals now accessible to everyone. Anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can become a photographer, a musician, a painter, an artist, an author, or a poet. The barriers to entry have been dismantled so thoroughly that the true essence of being an artist has been diluted to the point of absurdity. Gone are the days when art required peer review and validation by credible authorities. When people understood the concept of being rejected and accepted the idea of not being good enough. The self-serve platforms have effectively obliterated the need for hardened training to excel in any craft. Instead, we're drowning in a sea of self-proclaimed artists who possess the tools but lack the discipline and skill honed through years of dedication and critique. The result? An overwhelming flood of what can only be descr...
Read more

Welcome to the Machine

  “One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion” ―  Voltaire Perhaps one of the most famous thought experiment ever devised is the trolley problem. It is said to be the classic representation of the clash between the two schools of thought in the western philosophy  - utilitarianism and deontology. The problem states that a trolley is running down a track and on the track there are five people tied up and unable to move. There is an alternative track on which a single person is tied up. You are standing at a lever that can change the direction of the trolley to the alternate track. Your choices are to either do nothing and let the trolley kill five people or to pull the lever and divert the trolley where it kills one person. The dilemma here is that which is the more ethical option? Upon facing the situation, I assume, many people would choose to pull the lever. I myself might end up doing the same. However, t here are m...
Read more

News - facts or story?

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” ―  Thomas Jefferson In the times that we suppose are unprecedented, it is not the ubiquitously luring dangers of the pandemic that scare me the most but it is the news; something that we are more exposed to than the disease itself.  Open any news channel at any time (although maybe when they are actually reporting a piece of news and not discussing celebrity hairstyles or hooking up actresses with cricketers or reporting an Instagram video to be the best thing on the internet today) or read any column of any newspaper and you will find the tone of the report to resound that of someone telling their plight or sharing their joy or venting their anger or ranting their frustration. This may not seem a much of a problem as doing all that is the job of a reporter but it is a huge problem. And that is so because when a news report sounds like a story, it means that the reporter has...
Read more