THE MYTH

OF

SISYPHUS

The first time I picked this book up was a few years ago, I tried re-reading it multiple times but I don't think I had as open a mind as I do now. Reading it this time around, it was weird because he wrote the words that I've been trying to understand, trying to decipher, only for him to tell me it really doesn't matter. You can't try to understand something that has no explanation, or it has a million explanations but who's to say if that explanation is just a figment of the insides of someone's brain. One of Camus most famous quotes begins this book: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” (Pg. 1) To understand this book you have to be able to imagine all possibilities, especially the possibility of there being no true answer to the question of  “is life worth living?”  

Camus introduces to us the concept of the absurd. As he describes it, ‘the absurd’ is our desire to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless world, it's our consequence in the absence of God. Theres a term Camus uses that always catches my attention, philosophical suicide. This comes into play when we want so badly to find some sort of solution as to why the earth is the way it is and what our purpose is to serve the earth but receive no clear answer thus leading man to turn to religion. Which gives something for man to believe in. The absurd does not correlate to the irrationality of the world but our longing and determination to try and understand it. We can control and understand only what we see and know but anything beyond that is left to our imagination, we are a stranger to the world. Even with that being said, we are strangers to ourselves, forever bound to the confusing pulsating muscle in the middle of our chests that we seize to understand and are eager to pull out. We come to an age one day, whether its age 45 or age 17, one day we recognize time, that we belong to time. “Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.” (Pg. 5)

The title of the book, The Myth of Sisyphus, is exactly that, a myth. Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity only for its weight to pull it back down as he's almost at the top. It's said he was condemned to do this because he had stolen from the gods. Ægina is the daughter of Æsophus, she was taken by Jupiter leading her father to utter shock. Æsophus took his concern to Sisyphus, who was already aware of the situation. He offered to explain to Æsophus what he knew only if he had given water to the Citadel of Corinth, this is the act that sent him to the underworld. When being sent down, Sisyphus had wanted to test the love his wife held for him, and asked her to cast his body in the public square, but he awoke in the underworld. Asking for Pluto's permission, he returns to earth to rebuke his wife of her lack of human love, but when faced with the natural beauty of the earth he no longer wished to return. He lived some years on a gulf by the ocean until Mercury seized him back to the underworld, right back to his rock. 

The story of Sisyphus plays a huge role in our daily lives. If you take a look to see what he was condemned to do, push a boulder up, watch it fall down, follow after it, push it up again, you might view this as a tragedy. But you are living that tragedy. In man's everyday life, we rise, we work, we eat, we sleep, and then we rise again. This is no different. Everyday we repeat the same cycle and we never ask why. But when we finally do, the consciousness awakes. This can go one of two ways, man can go back to repeating the cycle or man can choose to stay awake. By staying awake and accepting that in the universe nothing is possible but all is given, one realizes that death is the only true reality. This brings me back to the term philosophical suicide because when turning to religion, one reaches for the hand of God in search for an answer as to what happens next. But one also becomes manipulated in a sense when believing in a God, he tells man of sins and shows you how to be “free” of all conscious that is not his, but the sin itself is not the act but the urge to want to know. Can you be free of a mind that always wants to know? The absurd is a sin but without a certain god, it doesn't lead to one but it lies in the state of the conscious man, acknowledging it makes it be sinful. We are not questioning the gift of God, rather we are questioning the logic that points to that affirmation. Chestov once wrote: “The only true solution is precisely where human judgment sees no solution. Otherwise, what need would we have of God? We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice.” Death and the absurd are really the only reasonable freedom we can obtain.

There is nothing truly proved in this world, therefore everything can be proved. Camus teaches us to contemplate all that we've been taught, even with that though, you may not perceive his perception to be reasonable. Then again is anything we believe in reasonable? By accepting the absurd we can find a sense of freedom in knowing that there truly is no correct answer, but the question is, will you be able to live with that? At the end of the book the very last line reads: “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” He has accepted his fate, he knows that his steps upwards and his cheek pressing against the stone are the closest to freedom as he can be. Though his fate was not drawn by him, he lives by it, he will die by it and when death comes he can once again be free.