We live in a world obsessed with goals, endless checklists, five-year
plans, visions of "success" that shimmer like distant mirages. But
what if happiness isn't found at the summit of achievement, but rather in the
quiet steadiness of presence? What if joy resides not in the arrival, but in
the act of pushing the stone itself?
Albert Camus, in his timeless philosophical work The Myth of Sisyphus
(1942), challenges us to look deeply into the absurdity of existence, and to
embrace it. He invites us into a world where meaning is not handed to us, but
carved from our own choices. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a
boulder up a hill for eternity, only to watch it roll back down each time he
reaches the top. A cruel fate, one might think. And yet, Camus asks us to
"imagine Sisyphus happy."
Why?
Because Sisyphus, in his eternal repetition, becomes a mirror to our own
lives. The routines, the cycles, the moments that blur into each other, they
are not failures of living, but the essence of it. Camus argues that it is
precisely in accepting the absurd, the lack of a grand, ultimate purpose, that
we find our freedom. We rebel not by escaping the absurd, but by facing it with
open eyes and unyielding spirit.
Happiness, then, is not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary
re-seen. It is not in discovering new landscapes, but in learning to see the
familiar with new eyes. The real journey is inward: a shift in perspective, not
location.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” - Marcel Proust
Life is redundant. Life is routine. But it is also ripe with texture,
subtlety, and meaning, if we choose to see it. In the slow unfolding of our
daily rituals, in the people we meet again and again, in the recurring seasons
of our emotions, there is wisdom. There is learning. There is joy.
Camus presents the artist, the passionate lover of life, and the free
thinker as icons of this rebellion against meaninglessness. They do not demand
answers; they create experiences. They live with intensity, not in spite of
absurdity, but because of it.
The artist paints not to solve chaos, but to dance with it. The lover
lives each moment fully, knowing it may not come again. The thinker stares into
the void, and instead of despairing, finds poetry.
Camus writes, “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.”
To embrace life as it is fleeting, repetitive, uncertain, is to choose
satisfaction over striving, presence over perfection.
So perhaps the question is not what can I achieve?, but how
can I be?
To wake up each day and push the same stone, consciously, willingly,
with grace, that is our quiet rebellion. That is our art. And in that, there is
a kind of joy that no summit could ever give us.
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