The 21st Century Sisyphus: Finding Meaning in the Mundane
This is my first post that translating article from Chinese into English version.
If you would like to read the original post, check here.
The Story of a 21st Century Sisyphus
The alarm clock rings every morning. Sisyphus opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling, and takes a deep breath. He knows it’s going to be another ordinary day.
Grooming, breakfast, squeezing into the subway.
At the office, mountains of documents await him. He starts working, mechanically completing one file after another.
Lunchtime arrives, he walks to the convenience store near the company.
Buys a sandwich, sits on a park bench, watching the passing crowd. He wonders:
“Are they pushing their own boulders too?”
After lunch break, Sisyphus returns to the office, continuing unfinished work.
The pile of documents is finally cleared, but he knows tomorrow will bring new mountains of tasks.
Work ends, he squeezes into the subway again to return home.
Dinner, shower, mindlessly scrolling through his phone.
Lying in bed, Sisyphus thinks about tomorrow, another similar day.
But strangely, he doesn’t feel despair. Instead, he finds meaning in this repetition.
Because he knows these ordinary days constitute the entirety of life. He chooses to accept, to find joy in the repetition.
Sisyphus smiles, closing his eyes.
Tomorrow, he will wake up again, start again. This is his rebellion, this is his victory.
Finding one’s own meaning in an absurd life.
The first time I read Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus,” I was utterly shocked.
As a reader, I watched Sisyphus from a third-person perspective, constantly pushing his boulder.
Just as he reached the summit, the boulder rolled back down, and Sisyphus started over.
From an outsider’s view, Sisyphus’ actions seem meaningless, utterly absurd.
But upon closer reflection, isn’t our daily life just the same?
Wake up in the morning, complete today’s tasks, sleep; wake up the next day, complete new tasks, sleep.
Looking at the bigger picture, a human life is no different, everything returns to the starting point at the moment of death.
❝ The meaning of life is its meaninglessness. ❞
This is nihilism, this is the absurdity of human existence.
But Camus tells us at the end of the story:
❝ One must imagine Sisyphus happy. ❞
We are the Sisyphus of the 21st century, pushing our own boulders every day.
Even though the boulder will eventually roll back down, we believe every moment of pushing is meaningful.
At the end of “The Courage to be Disliked,” the philosopher says:
❝ Life, so to speak, is a series of moments, like dancing in circles, one after another.“
❝ And when you look back, you realize: ‘Ah! I’ve come this far.’ ❞
What life pursues is not the moment of reaching the mountaintop.
Perhaps many people compare life to a journey, and we’re always on the way.
But the philosopher tells us: it’s not like that, we who are acting now are the result.
The past doesn’t exist, the future is blank; only the present moment, the current me is real.